J5 05 




: 



Militant iLebemt ButUnson 



2ln appreciation 



By William H. Richardson 




Class 



FH 4-4- 



Hook ' JbrJ JS' 



PRESENTED IIY 




WILLIAM LLVERETT DICKINSON 
(From the Gubelman Portrait! 



William Ecberctt Btcfetnson 



3ln Appreciation 




Prepared as a Souvenir of the Dickinson Centenary 

Celebration by the People of Jersey City 

November 25th, 1919 



By William H. Richardson 



The Jersey City Printing Company 
MCMXIX 



.35 



Gift 

Author 

kov 25 m 



FOREWORD 



Dear Mr. Richardson: 

We wish to express our gratitude and admiration for the patience 
and skill with which you have sought and assembled the materials of 
this book. It has been a labor of love on your part and your reward 
comes in knowing with what interest people read it. Older persons will 
revive the memories of their youth. The younger will learn of the man 
and his times, and not be so sure that the present days are greater or more 
progressive than the past. 

We, their sons, hold our parents in sacred remembrance and we 
are proud that their works do follow them after these many years and 
are now publicly celebrated in this way. 

Wm. H. Dickinson. 
Gordon K. Dickinson. 
Jersey City, 

November third, 1919. 



The Printing and Publication Committee of the Dickinson Cente- 
nary Celebration desire to express their warmest appreciation and grati- 
tude to so many friends on every hand who have manifested such cordial 
interest in this function, as well as in the preparation of this book. Par- 
ticular reference, however, should be made to the generous help extended 
by Mr. E. W. Miller of the Free Public Library in placing original 
records and documents at our disposal ; to the Jersey Journal, whose 
columns have aided so materially in co-ordinating the narrative which 
follows; and to Mr. E. F. Chilton, of the Standard Engraving Co., for 
his artistic reproductions printed on many of these pages. 




£ £ 






Z E 






3 £ 



WILLIAM LEVERETT DICKINSON 

Born January 19, 1819 
Wedded August 28, 1 843 
Died November 3, 1 883 



We are gathered to-night as real neighbors of our greatest and 
finest citizen, in order that we might recall the peculiar character of his 
greatness, and record in some faint measure the debt of civic obligation 
to the fineness of his intellectual achievement. 

When you search the local literature for writtten material upon 
which to base a story of W. L. Dickinson, doubtless the first thing — 
perhaps the only thing — you will find will be the "Dickinson Memorial," 
a 7 1 -page document containing addresses and other data compiled after 
the unveiling of the marble tablet at the High School in Bay Street, 
Feb. 22, 1884. Rev. Wm. Westerfield, Rev. Dr. Paul D. Van 
Cleef, George H. Linsley, Hon. A. A. Hardenburgh, Hon. Lewis A. 
Brigham, A. D. Joslin, M. H. Paddock, State Superintendent Apgar, 
Rev. Dr. Cornelius Brett, Thomas Potter, Hon. Bennington F. Ran- 
dolph, Maj. Z. K. Pangborn and Rev. Dr. Charles K. Imbrie, besides 
various professional and other associates of Mr. Dickinson, contributed 
to that symposium. 

Now the talent among that group of memorialists is of a pretty 
fine order. Not every man in Jersey City has been laid away to his last 
rest with such a galaxy of intimates to come and wish him good-night. 
One would naturally expect that in such a collection of memoirs he 
might find something that would tell us of the qualities that were recog- 
niged by his friends and categoried by them for our edification on such 
an occasion. 

Maj. Pangborn's testimonial was some 1,600 words long. He 
knew Mr. Dickinson as well as any other man in Jersey City, and cer- 
tainly a friend so loving and capable as Maj. Pangborn, whose oratory 
is one of the traditions I constantly meet up with in Jersey City, ought 
to be relied upon for the key to the life and character of William 
Leverett Dickinson. When the Major came to that sentence, "death 
found him at work," I think he had reached the climax. And of course 
Mr. Dickinson's work for nearly half a century in Jersey City had been 
what all his eulogists bad known, only for the varying periods of their 
personal experience. What a magnificent sum it would have made if 
it could have been materialized that day! 

It is the fashion when people gather on such an occasion to say the 
best things they can think of; if they did anything else they would be 
decidedly unpopular. Perhaps, too, seme of the subjects sketched 
might be. 



And when one has read through the pages of biography of that 
sort he can't help wondering at the remoteness, the isolation, of the man 
who had the lofty character they tell about. So I like to go "back of 
beyond" to see the origin of these things. Mr. Dickinson, no different 
from Mr. Lincoln, was not suddenly transfigured for us when he died 
on Nov. 3, 1 883. I here were a great many fundamentals, shaped 
long before the oldest of his eulogists knew him, that were built into his 
rounded, symmetrical manliness. 

Mr Dickinson's personal history is so inextricably involved with 
the real beginnings of Jersey City — and it is with no little pleasure that 
I make this "little journey" to the home of a great educator and meet 
his friends who knew him by his first name, with whom he talked politics, 
or debated, or tramped, or what not. There is a whole lot of the human 
side of Mr. Dickinson in the old, old town that was never touched upon 
by the friends of his last days, and with which we may very profitably 
get acquainted. 

Jersey City was chartered Feb. 22, 1838 — only about six months 
before Mr. Dickinson arrived here. The previous year a poll list of 
1 74 voters qualified to vote for selectmen for the new corporate Jersey 
City was prepared, and it is curious to note that those 1 74 names are 
nearly all of New England origin — not over half a dozen of Dutch 
origin ; a few, such as Brophy, McAleer, McKinney, Doran, Foley, 
McLaughlin, Lynch, McKay, Sweeney, Malone, Scalhon, carry a 
suggestion of still another paternal ancestry. 

1 hirty years afterward that poll list was made the subject of 
investigation and analysis by some local genius to prove the perma- 
nency of our city's grandparentage in fine fashion. Of those 1 74 pro- 
genitors of our new Society of Descendants of Jersey City's Founders, 
he said that sixty-six of them were still living in Jersey City; sixty others 
of them were still here, too, though resting quietly in our cemeteries; 
thirty-two had removed to other places; of sixteen no information was 
obtainable in 1857. ( 1 wo of those thirty-two, Peter Bentley and 
Francis H. Penny, were accounted for as having moved to a place 
called Bergen). It reads like a dream in this moving procession of 
population of 1919. 

At the particular juncture of the town's chartering there was no 
newspaper. Henry D. Holt did not start his Jersey Citv Advertiser and 
Bergen Republican till four months later, June 12, 1838 — and then 
the compositor made him a month late; he set it "July 12" — and his 
salutatory conveyed the information that "our paper will be an advocate 
of strict temperance; our own drink is cold water, and we shall recom- 
mend it to every one else as the best and only safe beverage." He de- 
clared that he did not design to make a pulpit of his desk, "but we pro- 
fess to be guided by religious principles ourselves. We are not ashamed 
of the gospel of Christ, and would place ourselves in no position that 
would be incompatible with its precepts." 

One cannot write a story of Mr. Dickinson without speaking of his 
friends, and Henry D. Holt, poet, litterateur by avocation, M. D. by 
profession, was one of them. I have discovered among some old papers 
quite a circumstantial account of the 1833 Independence Day celebra- 



tion, in which Mr. Holt was actively interested as an organizer. He 
was one of the stand-bys as an orator on those occasions for years. 
Isaac Edge, Jr., made a prodigious amount of fireworks for the evening 
display at the Thatched Cottage Garden; the same gentleman created 




HENRY D. HOLT, ABOUT 1839 
(From the Original Ivory Miniature by Kimberley) 

no little stir at the time by challenging the Boston balloonist, Lauriat, to 
a race in balloons for a $2,500 stake, the prize to be awarded to him 
who flew the further and mounted higher! Jersey City, by the way, 
had already furnished a citizen who was the first American to make a 
distance flight. 

When Mr. Dickinson came to Jersey City Martin Van Buren 
was President of the United States. Dr Holt did not run the Adver- 
tiser in Martin's interests. Martin was a Democrat, and the Advertiser 
was Whig. We seem to know less to-day about political animosities 
and animadversions than they did then. Fancy a political speaker to- 
day declaring that his party's doctrines were "as pure as those of Jesus 
Christ." Well, one was quoted then as saying so and no questions 
asked. Perhaps, because the paper quoting believed it was so! An- 
other gentleman assured his constituency that if he thought he had a 



drop of the opposition blood in his body he would open his veins and 
let it out — that was a sample of the spell-binding of 1638! 

So the "Loco-focos" and Whigs belabored each other unceasingly, 
disgracefully, disgustingly, in those times with an earnestness that seemed 
to be more real than anything we know to-day, when Democrats and 
Republicans can wake up the morning after and forget it. 1 here was 
a big political pow-wow at the Thatched Cottage Garden, Oct. 3, 
1 839, when the awful intent of the Loco-focos was direfully set forth by 

FIBE.WOBKS. 
United States Laboratory. 

ISAAC EDGE, Jr. PYROTECHNIST, now offers to the public the* 
most extensive and briluant assortment of (exhibition) Fire- Works 
in the United States, consisting of several thousand Honaryand Signal 
Rockets of various sizes, with rich and fancy headings; Wheels of 
every description, with plain and colored illuminated centres; Fixed 
Pieces of all the various descriptions that fancy might suggest; Mines, 
Bengola Lights, Roman Candles, Marroons, Ship Signals, Theatrical 
Fires, &c. &c. &c. 

N. B. Committees for city or country displays, military and private 
parties,. can be supplied on the most liberal terms with goods warrant- 
ed, the materials being selected from the most celebrated chemists in 
Europe. 

Agents in New-York — H.Yvelin, 231 Fulton-street, near Greenwich; 
Lewis Page & Son, 60 Maiden-lane ; Gassner <fe Young, 132 Chatham 
street ; Story and Hawkhurst, Brooklyn ; or of the -subscriber at the 
Laboratory, Jersey City. 

■ June 22, 1838. 

WHERE THE FOURTH OF JULY FUN CAME FROM 

the Whigs, who published all about these "abominable doctrines of 
our national tyrant" in a proclamation signed by about 1 00 per cent, 
of the men who were fathers of boys who later went to Mr. Dickinson's 
school. Van Buren was "our imbecile Chief Executive," he was the 
country's oppressor, and the "yeomanry of Bergen County" declared 
they would "bow the knee to no man." When the day arrived they 
would be found at their posts battling for the rights and liberties their 
brave forefathers secured upon the plains of Monmouth, Princeton and 
1 renton. 

The slavery question was an academic one then. 1 he Abolition 
Society in 1838 had 1 13,000 members in thirteen States and some in 
Jersey City, and the society was taunted because it hadn't yet freed one 
slave for all the millions of dollars they had expended! Of course 
that was the Loco-foco logic. There was a meeting by partisans of the 
society in the Pirst Reformed Dutch Church, of which Mr. Dickinson 
was a rrenber almost from the beginning of his citizenship here, and 
ugly threats were made in case the meeting was repeated. 1 he Town 
Council was appealed to to take proper steps to quell any outrage, and 
the burden of protecting the public peace laid upon the City Marshal, 
Nathaniel Ellis. There was a tie vote in Council when it came to a 
question so serious as aligning the corporation on one side or the other 
of the great dilemma. It took the vote of our Yankee Mayor, Dudley 
S. Gregory, to break the tie and decide in favor of protecting anti- 




■ I 



slavery meetings. 1 he three with whom he sided were Aldermen Bent- 
ley (the first Peter), Glaze and Jenkins. 

One of the subjects of gossip at the time was the report that 
Captain J. D. Wilson of the ship Newcastle, lying here in 1837, had 
kidnapped three Negro boys to sell them into slavery. David Kuggles 
wa ( s publicly posted for making such a charge and the Captain printed 
an advertisement denying it. I never saw anything in print emanating 
from the three boys. Mr. Bulwer, as he was then known, was quoted 
in the Advertiser as speaking before Parliament in favor of freeing the 
West Indian slaves; and the paper wondered why he didn't grow wor- 
ried about the many more millions of the East Indies who needed British 
philanthropy. 

I can find nothing in Mr. Dickinson's papers which will identify 
him with the craze that was then obsessing a great many of his new 
fellow citizens. Silk culture was as common then as purl 7, come 1 1 , 
is to-day; everybody was doing it — except Mr. Dickinson. Charles 

F. Durant, the first American 
aeronaut, lived on Hudson Street; 
he was one of the best known 
authorities on silk in the country. 
He got a silver medal and a 
diploma for his exhibit at the 
eleventh annual American Insti- 
tute Fair in Niblo's Garden, 
which commenced Oct. 1 5, 1 838. 
L. F, Douglass, the gentleman 
who made the original drawing 
of the familiar picture of lower 
Montgomery Street, advertised a 
bargain in 4,000 Italian white 
mulberry trees, "all seedlings, and 
in an uncommonly flourishing con- 
dition.'' The Vanbureners were 
lowdown nasty about it. They 
circulated campaignly the report 
that New Jersey had paid in 
bounties to silk culturists the awful 
aggregate of $40,000; where 
was the country coming to, any- 
how! So the Whigs wrote to 
Isaac Southard, the State Treas- 
urer, and Mr. Southard wrote back that only $18.98 had been paid to 
date as premiums for the culture of silk in New Jersey. 

Mr. Dickinson arrived in time to hear the first edition of that joke 
about the New Yorkers who said they were going west when they 
bought a ticket for Rahway. 1 he route then was the New Jersey Rail- 
road and Transportation Company, but the adventure did not begin 
until the Gothamite arrived in Jersey City. I rains to New Brunswick 
were run from the foot of Montgomery Street, two daily — every day, 
except Sunday — at 9 a. m. and 5 p. m. 1 hese trains left the/r hangars 




CHARLES T. DL'RAXT 



12 



in New Brunswick at 7 and 2:30, respectively. There were five trains 
to Newark, the two to New Brunswick being included in the score. 
The night service for Newark left at 8 and 1 1 besides, but as it was 
not safe to risk the locomotive out at night, horses pulled those trains. 
(P. S. — This is serious.) The fare from Jersey City to Newark was 




THE 



37^2 cents; Elizabethtown, 37 'S cents; Rahway, 50 cents; New 
Brunswick, 75 cents. And nobody kicked either. Jersey City was as 
good a place to be in as any of those others. 

Our friends in the Jersey City of 1 838 had no telegraph news, of 
course. The Advertiser's four pages carried, twice a week, a curious 
assortment of clipped stuff — short stories of a sentimental type, scien- 
tific Miscellany, poetry, etc. — on the two outsides, while the two in- 
side pages were given over to what was intended for local "news" and 
advertisements. The local news sometimes came from pretty far afield. 
Queen Victoria was just beginning her long and eventful life as Eng- 
land's Queen, and stories were printed about the dressing and behavior 
of those who attended the coronation on June 28, 1838, and the court 
functions later. John Van Buren, the President's son, was "joshed" 
as the most likely candidate for matrimonial honors in the current dis- 
cussion of her husband-who-was-to-be. 

At the same time the youthful Franz Joseph was at the dawn of 
the iniquitous career which ended in the inglorious overthrow of his 
house and his empire. Dr. Holt compared the "mummeries" of his 
coronation as King of Venetian Lombardy in the Cathedral of Milan 
as much like the ceremonies attendant upon the coronation of Queen 
Victoria. The procession of bishops, seneschals, major domos, archers, 
cushion-bearers with regalia, globe, sceptre, orb, etc., etc., were ex- 
tensively written up for the delectation of our grandfathers. 

Another political happening that meant a great deal more to 
Jersey citizens than we might imagine to-day was what was known 
then as the "Canadian uprising" of 1 838. I would gather from local 
newspaper references that the English Government didn't govern the 
Canadians just right. The Advertiser said, "We understand Great 
Britain spent from twenty-five to thirty million dollars within the last 
six months in what she calls maintaining her authority in Canada — 
but that is her own business." Still, there is nothing to prevent a bunch 
of Jersey City people, lots of them from the States along the border, 
having an opinion. Canada was to have been invaded from the States, 
when oath-bound patriots in Canada would join them — and Canada 

13 



would be free! Just like that. But a low-down villain named Carrow, 
U. S. Marshal by profession, and a still less sentimental British com- 
mandant, Lieutenant Dundas, undoubtedly spending some of those 
many millions, hand-picked the patriots in a bloody affray at Windmill 
Point. The news got into the Advertiser eleven days after it happened. 
In spite of a family background of Congregational church affilia- 
tion for many generations, Mr. Dickinson manifested that distinguish- 
ing liberality for which he was known all through life here by attaching 
himself very early to the Dutch Reformed Church, next door to His 
school, then ministered to by Rev. Dr. Lusk. One of the important 
discoveries I have made in prowling around among these old records of 
the past is the positive identification of a Congregational Church in 
Harsimus — then a separate village — on what is now James W. 
Green's corner; 1 have many reasons for believing that Mr. Dickinson 
had a great deal to do with that little church and its flourishing Sunday 
School. It is unreasonable to believe that so good a New Englander 
as he was would be missing from an enterprise in which I know that 
some of his intimate friends were very much interested. 

It is very curious sometimes to trace the origin of events; what a 
common-place moment it was, apparently, when the romance started that 
shaped the whole current of our lives ! It seems quite as ordinary an 
incident that brought William L. Dickinson here. John Dod Ward was 

once one of the big men of Jersey 
City, and he came here to live at 
20 Hudson Street in 1 838. As an 
engineer on pumping and water sup- 
ply problems he was recognized as 
an authority all over the country , 
when Jersey City put in her Passaic 
supply and the first mains in 1 85 1 -4, 
he was a member of the Water Com- 
mittee and his advice was invaluable. 
His particular enterprise here in 
1 838 was The Atlas Foundry at 
Wayne and Greene Streets. 

Mr. Ward had four boys, and 
the problem of their education was a 
little out of his line. He happened 
to have been living in Vergennes, 
Vermont, in the late '20's and early 
'30's and he knew something of the 
University of Vermont. So he 
wrote to its president asking if he 
could recommend a young man who 
could help him. Mr. Dickinson, 
who had just graduated (on August 
1st, 1838) was most cordially 
spoken of and he came immediately to Jersey City. 

It was one of the historic events of the town, quite as momentous as 
the arrival of Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia with his two loaves of 



.1$$^ ^ 




JOHN non WARD 



14 



bread under his arms. Mr. Dickinson, we are told with some delicacy 
by one of his funeral orators, had just six cents surplus when he arrived 
here — and when he was buried that same one of his friends declared his 
intellectual and moral attainments surpassed those of "any plumed con- 
queror of earth." 

An odd bit of autobiography was penciled for me by one of these 
little Ward boys when he was shut up in the house one day. As it tells 

Commencement Ball. 



* The attendance 

requested at the AMERIC A X MOTEL, on Wednesday 
evening, Aujnist 1st 



jjfttanaflers. 

U. H. PENN1MAN. [ A . MANN, 

J. BRADLEY, z „. CARBUTT, 

C. F WARNER, j, s . ADAMS, 

c - p - PECK, c. s . PUTNAM, 

E. C. LOOMIS, J. FORSYTH, 

R. N. FLACK, f c. WELLS, 

J. P. TABOR, „. UALE) 

GH.MOORE, H.J.RAYMOND, 



Burlington, July 21, 1838. 
FESTIVITIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT, 1838 

something of Mr. Dickinsons capacity as a teacher — or perhaps, of the 
precocity of the boy who wrote it — I venture to reprint it: "I am Lebbeus 
Ward aged 6 years almost, 1 840 — I am sick now — Ward Stillman & 
Co own The Novelty works — Boats are repaired by the Novelty works 
— Old Tom is the Porter — 1 4 horses in the stable — one of them Charles 
threw Father out of the carriage." The little son of John Dod Ward 
wrote a very good hand, and he had a very good head for English 
composition, I should say. 

Strangely enough the piece of paper he used for this thumb-nail 
sketch was a copy of the circular or prospectus with which William L. 
Dickinson had advertised his "Select School for Boys at Lyceum Hall," 
the year before. The circular was not dated, although we have a pretty 

is 



AV ILXCEUTjE ElAXE, 
By ■\V111. Ii. »ICIfcIrYSOIV, 

(Graduate of tlie University of Vermont.) 



The constant aim of instruction at this Institution will bo to form those 
habits of industrious application, which. -will cling to the student through life, and 
influence him in any occupation which may bo taken up. No pretensions mo 
made of making perfect scholars in a few months. All virtuous and honorable 
1'ininence is attained at the expense of many years of patient study and unwearied 
labor. Studies are pursued thoroughly as far as pursued, and with reference to 
ihc de\ elopement of the thinking powers of the mind. Students who are fitting 
for College, are required to pay the strictest attention to the grammatical con- 
struction of the languages, and in all things lny a broad and firm basis for the 
lutui'C acquisition of knowledge. In the student destined for the Counting-room, 
a- veil as all others, habits of exactness and punctuality arc continually encou- 
raged. The moral education is not neglected ; and, in short, with regard to all 
nf the nearly innumerable duties of teaching — whether moral, intellectual or 
physical — we can only say that they will be conscientiously discharged. ■ As the 
School has been continued several months under the care of its present teacher, 
its patrons are referred to with confidence. 



per Quarter. 

Latin, Greek, Philosophy, Chemistry, Rhetoric, Natural History, 

Algebra, Geometry and Trigonometry, .... £10 00 

Orthography, Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Grammar, History, 

Composition, Declamation, Geography, Astronomy, S 00 

Stationery and Fuel, extra. 



The following gentlemen of Jersey City — a Committee of the School, and 
also its patrons, are referred to : 



Rev. Mr. LUSK, 
A. ABBOT, 
J AS NARINE, 



D. S. GREGORY. E«q.. Mnyor, 
T. A. ALEXANDER, 
J. M. HOYT 



GEORGE DUMMER. 

THE FIRST PROSPECTUS, 1839 
(From the Original in the Collection of Wm. H. Dickinson) 



16 



fair idea that the School was fairly well organized by November, 1 839, 
which was when the first quarter started, as recorded in his school account 
books. In Mr. Holt's Advertiser a card was published during July, 
1839, stating that "William L. Dickinson, Teacher, Graduate of the 
University of Vermont'' would open such a school. 

Mr. Dickinson was popularly thought to have but one arm. In 
my researches I frequently meet old friends of his who speak almost 
immediately of this. Then I ask which arm was missing; just as I like to 
puzzle people who "knew Major Pangborn well," by wondering whether 
they could tell me what his first name was. As a boy of 1 3, he was one 
of a party of patriotic Green Mountain lads who were celebrating Inde- 
pendence day by "shooting anvils." It is a dangerous sport. Young 
Dickinson's job was to hold the powder flask. While the surgeon was 
trimming off the ragged remnants that dangled from his right wrist, which 
the sufferer endured with wide-open eyes and set teeth, he realized that 
Vermont was going to lose one good blacksmith, for he was to have 
succeeded to his father's business. The third finger of his left hand was 
crippled, too, but there were four digits remaining on his left hand, of 
rather high potentiality, as many of his old pupils assure me from personal 
experience. Mr. Dickinson could persuade a mischievous boy into 
almost anything when he fastened his thumb and index finger on the 
sides of his skull or above the shoulder. The remnant of his right arm 
was a most convenient place for storing the much feared ferule. 

Perhaps blacksmithing would have been no harder work than he 
afterward accomplished in entering the University in the sophomore class 
and graduating when he was 1 9, for I rather imagine it was no soft thing 
to start at I 3, reorganize his expectations of life and prepare for an 
entirely new grouping of his faculties, both mental and physical. It is 
simply a modern miracle that he did what he did. 

Among the priceless treasures preserved in the Free Public Library 
collection are the account books of this remarkable school. These were 
placed there by his son, Dr. Gordon K. Dickinson, and it has been my 
high privilege to turn over those pages of intimate personal local history. 
In their generation practically all the men of mark of Jersey City were 
moulded there; not all the Dickinson boys were top-liners, of course, but 
most of the top-liners of Jersey City were Dickinson boys. 

Mr. Dickinson wrote with his left hand and with an almost incred- 
ible speed and facility. When you get the secret of reading it, it is 
easily legible. Instead of holding the sheet square in front of you, swing 
it around a little so that the right corner is nearer your body ; that was the 
way he had the page fixed when writing. His extraordinary fluency 
with his pen startled lots of people and was the subject of public comment 
more than once. 

These records cover, as far as I know, the entire period of the life 
of the school, which ended apparently Mafrch 1 2, 1 858. They just stoo 
on that day in an uncompleted book; there is no comment upon the 
tragedy, whatever. The day closes just as any other common-place day, 
and there is no resumption of the records. Neither of Mr. Dickinson's 
sons, William H. or Gordon K., could tell me the exact time the school 
was abandoned, nor give any other reasons save that Mr. Dickinson, who 

17 



^ ' 



5 
£ 



5f £* *? 




$ tl y , 




had always fancied a legal profession, simply faced a new organization 
or co-ordination of his faculties, and started at 40 years of age to work 
out the problem. But back of that there was another reason. Of 
course, Mr. Dickinson would not have made as good a blacksmith as he 
did an educator — and Jersey City would have suffered immeasurably had 
not the Providence which permitted his physical mutilation also looked 
after his development along intensely spiritual and intellectual lines. 

On page 35 of book A, the first ledger of the new Lyceum School, 
is an entry which seems to carry with it a prophecy of the life and char- 
acter of the man who set it down, his infinite care, his methodical habits, 
and all the rest: 

"Dec. 1 4, 1 839 — I, William L. Dickinson, having before my 
eyes continued warning, & in my purse the troublesome effects of an 
inattention to pecuniary expenditures, do hereby solemnly and reverently 
resolve that (Deo volente) I will keep an exact account of all my 
expenditures, great & small." 

1 hen he entered two more lines: "Cash on hand, $28; bills due, 
$32.54." In the language of the day, that looks like $4.54 in a hole 
for William L. Dickinson at the beginning of his life of service in a 
strange land — a life of such superb helping and giving! I don't know 
what his cash book would have shown had he struck the balance the day 
his great life closed — a little less than half a century later; but you who 
have some acquaintanceship with the money makers of that half century 
may form yourr own opinior. as to who may have left the real legacy. 

Once a well-known citizen of Jersey City remarked about Leonard 
J. Gordon when it was proposed to name a park after him: "Linnard 
Gordon — Linnard Gordon! What did he l'ave?" I often think of 
"Linnard" Gordon, as well as some other members of the splendid society 
of past years who really left something more than a big diamond and a 
dirty shirt front behind them v/hen they were stripped to the soul for their 
appearance before the Judge who tries even the eyelids of men. 

Well, to go back to our frugal Vermont schoolmaster again. Mr. 
Dickinson kept nine months' expense accounts in that little book with 
most conscientious regard — even down to a penny for "one newspaper 
good for nothing." He is refreshingly frank in some of his confidences 
in his cash book. For instance, he makes an entry for "candy very 
foolish I2l'j;" for "one orange for buying which I was a fool, .04;" 
for "apples, very foolish expenditure, .02." 

One day he spent six cents for walnuts and twelve cents for soda 
water without even blinking in his entry for that Coal Oil Johnny wide- 
walk. As there are lots of other entries for nuts and walnuts, at three 
cents per dissipation, we may very demurely venture to wonder who was 
the partner in his extravagance on that delightful spring day in I 840. 
He went to the Lyceum Fair Dec. 20, 1839, and let go of $1.25 
without a rustle of discontent; he likewise recorded his separation from 
$1 for "tickets" (not one ticket) for "Mr. Dana's lecture." A shave 
cost 6I4 cents in those days (he had one just before he went to that fair), 
a haircut was 12' > cents (Ye wa« set back the price of one just before 
New Year's, 1840), and his frivolities that day (not analyzed at all) are 
all bunched under one item (no regrets expressed) as "New Year's, $.75. 



In the nine months of this exhibit he bought one coat at $16.50; 
another (with pantaloons) at $1 7; at another time "pants" $9, and still 
another coat at $21.50; two vests at different times, each $3.00; boots, 
of which he only owns up to buying one pair, were $3.50; a hat $2.75. 
In other words out of a total of $529.69 expenses, $84.75 went for 
raiment, and he spent the money with great cheerfulness, apparently. 
These little details are not set down for the sake of peeping into Mr. 
Dickinson's wardrobe, but as illuminating glimpses of the cost of the 
apparel of a genteel young man and his living when Jersey City was in 
its infancy. 

Now as to the more serious diversions of our fine friend. In the 
course of this essay I think the sensible reader will grasp something con- 
cerning his intellectual calibre, and it is of interest therefore to pick out 
here and there some of the expenditures to show the use of his time: 

Society dues, $1.62^2; hymn book, $1.00; President's message, 
.01 ; Book of Pleasures, .37]A\ Society Library, .50; expenses for so- 
ciety, .20; Lyceum fees, .50; monthly concert, .25; panorama of Lima, 
.37^; Greek Lexicon, $4.00; Greek Testament, $1.75; Armstrong's 
Bible, $1.40; society dues, $1.31 ; society dues again, $1.00; Bible 
Society, .40; New York views, .16; Missionary Herald, $1.50; Sailors' 
Society, .50; Baker's Notes on Genesis, $1.50; maps, $2.00; books, 
.62y 2 ; Jersey Institute, $3.00. 

That "Book of Pleasures" referred to in item number four, for 
which he spent 37^ cents, is before me as I write this story. It was 
presented to the young lady who afterward became Mrs. Dickinson, and 
her autograph is pencilled faintly at the top rright corner of the title page. 
It is a handsome little morocco bound volume of poetry by three great 
authors — just a little faded flower in a romance of eighty years ago. 

From these old account books we can get a fairly good insight into 
the curriculum of our grandfathers, as well as the prices of school litera- 
ture of their day. Almost invariably after setting down the first line for 
"tuition for the quarter ending" so-and-so, the new boy, if of tender 
years, was charged with a slate at 1 83/^ cents and a Testament at 20 
cents; or, if a little more advanced, with a copy book at 1 cents. Dud- 
ley S. Gregory, Jr., or, rather, his father, got stung with two one day, 
"one of which Dudley tore up." We may imagine what happened to 
Dudley, particularly as Mr. Dickinson had decided notions about the 
real cure for distemper. Fuel for the cold quarters of the year was 
charged at 50 cents. "Peter Parley's Histories" were used, with those 
wonderful Alexander Anderson wood cuts to look at; Town's spelling 
book, .16; singing book, .25; Emerson's arithmetic, .37^; Angell's 
reader, .183^; Cobb's reader, .25; Worcester's readers, .50; Worces- 
ter's 4th reader, .87^4; Russell's reader, .50; Smith's grammar, .37^; 
U. S. History Question Book, .25; Parley's history, .37%; Barber's 
history, .75; Parley's geography, .25; Morse's geography, .50; Mit- 
chell's geography, .50; Olney's geography, .45; Adams' arithmetic, 
.40; Mental Arithmetic, .25; algebra, .$7 l / 2 ; Vire Romae, .62^; 
Latin reader and grammar, $1.40; Sallust, $1 ; Cicero, %\.37 1 / 2 ; Vir- 
gil, $2; Greek lexicon, $4.50; Greek grammar, %\.37 l / 2 ; Greek Testa- 
ment, .87 1'2 ; Greek exercises, .87' j; Anthon's Classical Dictionary, 

20 



$5; Gould's Universal Index, $3; Butler's Ancient Atlas, $2.50; 
botany, .87^2; physiology, .87^4; chemistry, .87^; Receuil Choisi, 
.44; 1 elemaque, .60; French dictionary, .60; Marks (S. E. ) Book- 
keeping, $1 ; Bennet's (D. E.) Bookkeeping, $1.50; Watts on the 
Mind, .31 y 2 ; Comstock's Philosophy, $1.30. 

Quill pens were always used in the school, and Mr. Dickinson's 
dexterity in sharpening them was another source of wonderment to his 
boys. The writing was dried with sand, sprinkled from a sand-box, 
something like a big pepper-box with a wide flary top so that the sand 
could be poured off the paper and back into the box. That's a curiosity 
to most folks to-day. William H. Dickinson still preserves in his col- 
lection the box his father used for many years. 

On the margins of the musty "scholarship and attendance" books 
Mr. Dickinson was accustomed to jot down notes of the moment — just 
the trifles of daily experiences or happenings, and some of them are very 
curious now. They have the singular quality of almost breathing the 
breath of life into that famous institution on Grand Street which to a few 
is only a memory, to most not even a tradition. 

In one of the newspapers Mr. Dickinson saw a line like this; "A 
man consumes 10 quarts of airr per minute." So he wrote that line and 
the source of it down under date of May 2, 1844, with the following 
additional comment: "Dimensions of the school room — Length, 31^4 
feet; width, 17 feet; height, 9 feet; cubic contents, 4849^4 — 36052 
gallons, wine measure." 

I have not checked up Mr. Dickinson's figures at all: I have set 
them down just as I find them — but I wonder how many of our first 
citizens of Jersey City have sweated over discovering how long it would 
take them to drink up the cubic contents of the school room before they 
said good-bye to it. And, by the way. it really wasn't a very la.-rge room 
after all, to become the intellectual focus, the laboratory of genius, for 
thousands of boys, the grateful God-children of this great Educator of 
ours. 

Here is another odd one jotted down on the fly leaf of the "Lyceum 
School Day Book from March 2 1 , 1842, to Nov. 3, 1843": 

"Remedy for the tooth-ache, J. City, Feb. 21, 1844. This day 
my wife went to Mr. Woolsey's & the young ladies told her that onions 
chopped fine & made into a thick poultice with salt was an excellent 
■remedy for the tooth-ache." 

A good many of us wonder why Dr. Dick has excelled in medicine, 
and I now let the world into the secret: he has been keeping up his sleeve 
all these years his father's book of household remedies and practicing them 
slyly and profitably. It would have been very much to the point if Mr. 
Dickinson had added a few illuminating instances showing upon whom 
this tooth-ache remedy had been applied with distinguished success. 

All through these books, set opposite the name of the pupils, are 
terse comments upon their personal biography. R. B-roas got the whoop- 
ing cough October 18th, 1849 — the "whooping cough" is entered 
against him week after week — but he disappears from the school history 
after the Christmas holidays. A. Williamson was marked "scarlet fever" 
on January 1 I, 1850. He was back in school in ten days — perhaps 

21 



some potent household remedy was responsible for that in those days — 
although I notice there was none for good old fashioned whooping cough. 
On January 6, 1853, "there was no recess at noon, but school was dis- 
missed at 2 o'clock to attend the funeral of Carlos Worth who was at 
school Monday and died Wednesday morning of scarlet fever." There 
were funerals of two other Lyceum boys shortly after — scarlet fever, also, 

Stuck away between the leaves of these old school account book? 
are some singular pieces of ephemera, which certainly make some fine 
"close-up" views of good old Jersey City. Here is a specimen which 
Mr. Dickinson doubtless slipped into the pages of the book, right where 
I found it 75 years after the morning trembling little Robbie brought 
"a note from mamma": 

"Jersey City, April 1 0, 1 844. Will Mr. Dickinson please in- 
form me at what hour Robert was dismissed yesterday, as he did not 
come home till night. — Mrs. Chapman." 

Certainly, that was one of the moments when a feller needed a 
friend. Mr. Dickinson furnishes a fairly plausible theory as to where 
Robbie went before he went home, by telling us in his "remarks" column 
for April 1 0, 1 844, that the "solar microscope showed to-day. Many 

ol^S zif^LeC^ ''A^m^ u'£<ri~eA£' 




<^UW / ^f/yC^. i 



ROBERT PLAYED TRUANT! 

pupils absent." Robert Chapman survived the experience a good man) 
years ; and he would have had some fun if we could have con- 
fronted him with this evidence of his perfidious boyhood, this betrayal 
ol maternal trust in "baggin' it" to go to a cheap low down street show! 
I have before me as these lines are written the "composition" of a 
"Jersey Urbo" boy named Cyri A. Chacei — at least, that's what he 
indorsed the essay, although he was thoughtful enough to date it "Jersey 
City, April 6, 1846," so that we who have not had the advantages of 
a classical education might understand. Cyrus A. Chace was his real 
name, and he was one of Mr. Dickinson's students, and he prepared this 
sketch of his visit to the American Museum on Saturday, the 4th of 
April, when he and his friends feasted their eyes upon that wonderland. 



22 







s. c 



'7. -"Eh 



23 



He concludes the 400-word narrative of his adventure with the naive 
statement that "I forgot to mention that I did not go home with the school 
because I was so busily engaged in looking at the things, that I did not 
notice that they had gone." 

Notwithstanding the fact that the youth of to-day are so fed up on 
aeronautic expositions, surpassing electric lighting displays, and the mani- 
fold marvels of modern invention, the ordinary, old-fashioned circus still 
grips. It did in 1 848, too. Sands, Lent & Co, carried a six inch card 
in the papers, mostly fine type — but not so fine it couldn't be read by 
the boys, I'll bet! — telling of their Hippoferaean Arena, which showed 
here Wednesday, Oct. 25. There was a long story about the various 
performers and their daring acts, and then "this Mammoth Corps will 
enter town on the morning of the exhibition at 1 1 o'clock in procession 
and cavalcade. The Sacred Egyptian Chariot of Isis and Osiris drawn 
by ten Egyptian Camels, containing the splendid full band attached to 
the Company ! Next in order will be the East Indian Car drawn by 
two Elephants, followed by the magnificent stud of horses and all the 
numerous costly and highly ornamented vehicles belonging to the Com- 
pany. The beautiful Fairy Carriage drawn by twenty Liliputian Ponies, 
driven in hand, will bring up the rear of the procession, the toute en- 
semble of which surpasses anything which language can describe." 

I guess that ought to have fetched out the boys and girls of '48; 
and it did shut down the Lyceum Classical School, too! 

Mr. Dickinson was one of the pioneers, apparently, in a scientific 
study of cause and effect. Most of us perhaps have heard the story of 
the new salesman who explained his dearth of orders by elaborate reports 
upon the rain or the snow, or what not, in the various towns he visited ; 
to which his employer curtly replied that "vot ve vant is bizness, not 
veather reports." 

But weather reports were kept by Mr. Dickinson, because they 
were useful to him in his business. For nearly 20 years — from 1 839 
to 1858 — he has recorded at the foot of each column of his daily at- 
tendance record a terse abstract of just what happened that day, with 
a view of explaining its effect upon the school. Under June 12, 1843, 
"Warm-Pleasant — Pres. Tyler made his entree into New York. Dis- 
missed school % past 1 1 o'clock." And the hottest days and the worst 
snows and the heaviest rains are similarly noted for all that score of years. 

At the end of the lines opposite the name of a pupil it was his habit 
to write his very interesting biographical notes: I have read lots of the 
eulogies of these boys, pronounced after they had finished with their 
careers in many high concerns of earth ; but as boys they were really very 
human beings. I should not dwell perhaps too much on this phase of 
this story, because I would not want any boy to throw it up to me, in 
case he was being pointed to the great example of some of our distin- 
guished citizens, that he had as good a right to his fling as the boy of 
1 839. Perhaps I had better omit abstracts from those columns of Mr. 
Dickinson's records. 

I am sorry I cannot tell more than Mr. Dickinson has told us in his 
brief history of Christopher Hesley, "a workman in the glass manu- 
factory of P. C. Dummer & Co." He entered the Lyceum Classical 



School, December 6, 1844, at $ 1 per term "to attend only on Friday 
afternoon and Saturday morning." He paid for four terms, and for 1 
reader at 50 cents, 1 copy book at 10 cents, and another reader at 62^4 
cents. It would be real romantic to be able to follow Christopher's 
progress to some lofty professional pinnacle, but the I 849 directory lists 
him still as a glass blower, living on York Street near Washington. But 
he was not the same sort of a glass blower he was before, I'll warrant. 
John Eltringham kept the fires faithfully in winter time then. He entered 
school December 1 1, 1843, and his tuition fees of $6 per quarter were 
"to be paid in lighting fires and sweeping room." Mr. Dickinson's heart 
always went out to a boy who wanted an education badly enough as to 
want to work for it ; he knew all about that from his own experience. 
Another manifestation of the 
fine spirit of Mr. Dickinson 
is shown in his own record con- 
cerning A. Wilson McClure, 
son of Rev. A. W. McClure, 
who entered the school in 
May, 1852. "Sep: After an 
irregular attendance of a few 
weeks he left school in conse- 
quence of ill health. I wish 
no bill (the account was 
$8.78) ever to be presented to 
the Rev. A. W. McClure, as 
he is my pastor." It was Dr. 
McClure who brought the 
thought of the stately building 
dedicated September 22, 
1853, and still standing, just 
west of the Lyceum. Mr. 
Dickinson was the friend of all 
of those ministers. He saved 
for us the portrait of the dis- 
tinguished and scholarly Rev. 
D. R. Riddle, who was pastor 
of the First Reformed Dutch 
Church from 1857 to 1862. 

There must have been many trials and struggles, and setbacks, too, 
in the organization of a capable school. Mr. Dickinson spent lots of 
money in buying text books on algebra, and mental arithmetic, and 
mathematical junk of all kinds; and here comes a chap who advertises 
on September 11, 1 847, what he can do with mathematics, with no such 
commonplace aids as Mr. Dickinson finds necessary to his business: he, 
Peter M. Deshong, mathematician, will add figures as fast as they can 
be put down, no matter what length or breadth the column ; in 5 seconds 
after the figures are set down he will start to set down the correct addi- 
tion, commencing on the left. Or he will multiply, divide, egregiously 
great numbers; square, cube, or extract roots, compute interest, instan- 
taneously. He is fairly bewildering in his fantasies over those things that 




REV. D. R. RIDDLE 
(Pastor First Reformed Dutch Church, 1857-62) 



came so hard to most of us — and for $10, the small sum of $10, mind 
you, he will sell his rules for all this magic, so simple that a child can 
master them! A set of these rules would be sent free to any paper copy- 
ing the reading notice and the advertisement appearing in the Telegraph. 
Fine old dope, isn't it! 

Another gentleman came in the guise of a metropolitan to show 
these plodding Jerseymen what he could do in the ways of short-circuiting 
intellectual achievements. Here is a March, 1 848, advertisement in the 
Telegraph: "R .Hunter, stenographer from New York, respectfully in- 
forms the inhabitants of Jersey City that he will open classes in stenogra- 
phy at 30 Newark Avenue, late residence of Doctor Ellis.'' Then fol- 
lowed quite a dissertation on the excellence of his "system," and the 




THE TJIATC 



:D COTTAGE GARDEN AS IT APPEARS IN 1919 

Photograph by W. H. Richardson 



facility with which it could be learned "in from 8 to 1 6 lessons, accord- 
ing to the capacity of the pupil." He gives the sidelight on Jersey City's 
business collegiate life, that it was not co-educational; "Ladies will be 
taught at their own homes by appointment or engagement." 

I don't know exactly where in America to-day one would go to 
find the counterpart of the Thatched Cottage Garden and its genial 
proprietor, Judge Samuel S. Lynch. It was the rendezvous for all the 
niceties of town celebrations; our old-fashioned 4th of July celebration, 
and May day Sunday School walks, and things of that sort, could not 
be successfully pulled off without the Thatched Cottage figuring impor- 
tantly. In short, Judge Lynch seemed to be the most remote antithesis 



26 



of the character we ordinarily associate with that name. 1 here were 
many rowing and sailing regattas starting from the front of the garden, 
and spectators could sit upon the benches under the trees and look away 
down the river, as their favorite skipper raced his boat over the nine- 
mile course to "Bedloe's Island and back;" or over the longer one to 
"Fort Diamond and back." 

Do you wonder the place was just a bit of an attraction to the 
young gentlemen of the Lyceum Classical School? That Chapman boy 
who played truant once before for a street show, did it again on or about 
June 1 2, 1 847, and got his name in the paper by falling off the 1 hatched 
Cottage dock. And he would have been drowned if a son of Judge 
Lynch and a son of Mr. Gamble, James Gamble, had not been on hand 
to pull him out. If only one boy had played truant that time there would 
have been a tragedy — and the incident furnishes an example of that 
paradoxical thing, two wrongs that made a right! In winter time the 
boys used to skate from Jersey City to Powder — later Ellis — Island. 

The cuisine of the Thatched Cottage was celebrated far and wide. 
Imagine a great New York organization coming over here and parading 
our streets with their elegant band before proceeding to its annual din- 
ner — yet this is what the "Knickerbockers" did Dec. I 3, 1847. There 
was a large company of them — the papers are exasperatingly silent on 
such details as names and numbers — but they do tell us of their striking 
uniforms, three-cornered cocked hats, wigs, top boots, long coats — 
genuine colonial military style. 

In another curious connection we get the name of the power that 
brought the epicures here: On May 6, 1848, J. L. Poulet, the chef, 
signs an advertisement that "Green Turtle soup and Steakes will be 
served at the New Hall of the Thatched Cottage on Tuesday, May 9, 
between the hours of 1 2 noon and I p. m. Families would be sup- 
plied by the quart, if desired." And I'll warrant that was some turtle 
soup! Besides that "New Hall," by the way, there was also a new 
bowling alley that got into print for its alluring features. Take it all in 
all, our friend the Judge had a combined country and aquatic club that 
would be hard to beat anywhere to-day. 

Perhaps that is an awfully long preface to the short statement that 
Mr. Lynch's two sons, Samuel and Edward, were entered at Mr. Dick- 
inson's school in 1 842 and Edward was still there in 1 848. I notice 
that for one of the terms Mr. Lynch paid "cash in advance"; that an- 
other large bill for $20 worth of tuition, etc., was settled by "cash and 
groceries"; but "green turtle soup and steakes ' were evidently not legal 
tender at the Lyceum School or in the Dickinson houshold. 

The Mexican War was not much of a subject of newspaper con- 
troversy, because the only able Jersey City journalists believed it ab- 
horrent ; there was no one to quarrel with them editorially. The New 
England dominants here were opposed to its prosecution, of course, be- 
cause they saw in it nothing else than the extension of slave territory. It 
has remained for us of this generation to have a higher sense of the real 
destiny of the vast empire then acquired, to see it peopled with just as 
loyal Americans as there are in Massachusetts or North Carolina or 
Illinois. 

27 



News of the conflict on the other side of the Rio Grande was al- 
ways meagre. It came generally in the shape of month-old reports clipped 
or mutilated from New Orleans papers, or some other remote source. 
I think there was one "soldier" letter published once from "an intelligent 
and capable young officer" from Jersey City who was attached to Lieu- 
tenant Dummer's company — I am not sure from the published annota- 
tion which one it was with the 1 Oth Regiment — but the letter carries no 
particular human or local interest, and the young officer's name is not 
even disclosed; certainly the letter carries with it no particular evidence 
of the intelligence or capacity of its author. Another instance is noted 
of a company of soldiers who attended services one Sunday in old Trinity 
M. E. on their way to Mexico, just a few lines about it. 

A four-inch report of the capture of the City of Mexico appears 
in the Telegraph of August 1 1, 1847. A dispatch from Mexico dated 
July 1 7 via New Orleans was alleged to be the basis of the report. Four 
days later a confirmation was published in a few lines. It is a curious 
commentary upon the news perspective of three quarters of a century ago. 

A gentleman named General Winfield Scott had something to do 
with the fighting in Mexico. On or about May 26, 1 848, he passed 
through Jersey City on his way from Mexico to Elizabethtown, where 
he lived. The Telegraph gives the incident in about 20 lines. It said 
the way they first knew he was here was because of the cheering over in 
the railroad depot! The General had a low-power press agent. I have 
talked with the boy who drove him on that Sunday to Elizabethtown. 
There was no train that day, and he had to take a carriage from Jersey 
City, and so John Scott, still of Jersey City, drove General Winfield Scott 
to Elizabethtown and heard all about the Mexican war from the man who 
made it. 

Now that our children of school age barely look over their shoulders 
or bend their necks every time they hear the rattling purr of an aeroplane 
above them, it seems difficult to recall the moments when those things were 
novelties of the strangest sort. The Telegraph of July 27, 1848, con- 
tains an article, much embellished with facetiousness, telling of the pro- 
posal of one Dr. Solomon Andrews, president of the Inventors' Insti- 
tute, to build an Aerial Car. He was going to construct it at Perth 
Amboy; the experiments would require an outlay of $15,000 in cash 
and the study and work of many intelligent mechanics. So he wanted 
the said mechanics with said surplus in hand to buy lots of land at Perth 
Amboy, which he could furnish, and he would furnish the plans for the 
Aerial Car also. It was Dr. Andrews who entertained Mr. Durant from 
Jersey City in his first flight as an American aeronaut in 1830. 

A big shed 1 00 feet long and 40 feet wide would be erected 
first — evidently Count Zeppelin must have dug the newspaper clipping 
out of the Amerikanischeinformationsbureau-bericht, and used it bodily, 
for Dr. Solomon clearly had a cigar-shaped dirigible in mind. The in- 
ventor was shy several important details in the successful prosecution of 
his work and he called upon any of his readers to kindly give their sug- 
gestions. For example, he wanted to know who had a good recipe for 
a varnish to apply to cloth to make it impervious to hydrogen gas. Some 
job! 



23 



/ 



AGENCY OF THE 

..ETNA FIEE INSURANCE COMPANY 

©IF m&mTOaMBOD. 

Office, No. 72 Wall Street. 




f%ur |5altnj, 



<0? 



Q <$' 



I*/??? 




T. A. ALEXANDER. Agent, 

IV©. 72 Wall direct. 

This Company was incorporated in llic year 1810, with n perpetual Charter, (Capil;il 
$300,000, with liberty to increase [o $.500,000,) and insure against loss or damage by 
lire, on Dwelling Houses, Stores, Manufacturing Establishments, Household Furniture and Mer- 
chandise in general, on the most favorable terms. 

This Company h; s done business in this City more than twenty ye:irs. The ample means and 
successful business of the Company, has enabled it to pass through several extensive conflagra- 
tions, and to meet its losses with unusual promptness; and any losses which it may sustain on 
risks taken at this Agency will be liberally adjusted by the Agent here, according to the usage o( 
the best Fire Insurance Companies of the City of New-York, and paid with promptness in 
money current in the Banks in this City. 

In case differences should arise touching any loss or damage, the Company is pledged by a 
resolution of the Board of Directors, to submit the same to arbitrators indifferently chosen, or at 
the option of the assured, the jurisdiction of the Courts of this City will be acknowledged. 



BOARD OF DIRECTORS. 

THOMAS K. BRACE, JOHN L. BOSWELL, 

SAMUEL TUDOR, EBENEZER FLOWER, 

JOSEPH PRATT, E. A. BULKELEV, 

WARD WOODBRIDGE, EDWIN G. RIPLEY, 

JOSEPH CHURCH, ROLAND MATHER, 

FREDERICK TYLER, -SAMUEL S. WARD, 

ROBERT BUEL, HENRY Z. PRATT, 

MILES A. TUTTLE, AUSTIN DUNHAM, 
JOHN W. SEYMOUR. 

THOMAS K. BRACE, Pi-rzidcni 
1. LOOMIS. Secretary. 



Baker. Godwin A Co.. Printers, Tribune BuiMinw, Vew.Ywk. 

29 









S« i 



4 
I 



I 








A 



n 



t 
^ 



I have looked all through the attendance reports of the Lyceum 
School and fail to find that Mr. Dickinson ever adjourned it so that the 
pupils could see *he Aerial Car go by. The Honorable Jake's six- 
cylinder Bergen Bus "Governor Rice" was the biggest thing that ever 
went down the pike in the days of the Classical. 

There are still plenty of people in Jersey City who can recall W. L. 
Dickinson, and I have tried to glean from them some interpretation of his 
fine soul. As one of my friends said, "I can't express it, but somehow 
he always impressed me with the idea that I was the one pupil he was 
banking on for big results. I felt a little chestier after he talked to me 
like a comrade; I was in his partnership; I had to make good, or break 
a trace trying!" 

Now when you come to analyze the life of a man — let us take 
one of our own day, like Dr. Brett, whom we all know and love — you 
find that he did not acquire his lovable characteristics, his admirable 
qualities, just like he put on an overcoat. We know very well that blind 
Dr. Brett did not step out of the manse on Bergen Avenue with Mrs. 
Brett on his arm, and instantaneously command the courtesy and kind- 
ness and respect of a big community. Why, they were lovely all their 
lives; but they could have had ugliness in spirit just as easy, if they had 
worked at that instead. A half century of pessimism is quite as notice- 
able, though not quite so attractive in one's character as fifty years of 
optimism. 

In 1842 ten of Mr. Dickinson's boys framed a note to accompany 
a silver cake dish they gave him. I have the original document before 
me as I write these lines. It is beautifully penned and a bit formal in 
its expression ; there are only three sentences in it, and when you go 
through it carefully you can readily understand that those boys could not 
have put anything more in it, if they had been called upon 41 years after- 
ward to be his eulogists. He gripped the heart of those boys then, just 
as he did the thousands and thousands in after years. 

There is such a wealth of material showing his attachment to all 
the finest features of life, his interest in best things, that it is difficult to 
select illustrations. H. J. Raymond was a classmate and intimate friend 
of his in the University of Vermont. In 1 842 Mr. Raymond was im- 
portantly connected with the Tribune; later he founded the New York 
Times. He wrote a letter, on October 15, 1842, introducing Mr. 
Dickinson to Taylor Lewis, Esq., in which he was proud to speak of him 
as "a young man of unexceptionable character and of high literary and 
religious aspirations." And this brief but magnificently descriptive 
biography was written 41 years before he died, when he was simply on 
the threshold of a career that was so grandly apostohc in its devotion to 
the loftiest ideals of service to humanity. 

Here is another fine note in the symphony contributed by the dis- 
tinguished Dr. W. G. T. Shedd, later of Andover Theological Sem- 
inary. He and Mr. Dickinson were chums at the University, and for 
years they practiced the fine art of letter-writing, real letter-writing. I 
have a remarkable sample of this correspondence, a letter from Dr. Shedd 
dated June 3, 1841. He chaffingly upbraids his Jersey City friend 
for his delinquency about answering letters: I look at the folded face of 



the sheet whereon are the address and post mark, and see that the post- 
master has penned the figures 18 ; ^ 4 cents postage which Mr. Dickinson 
had to pay, and I have seen what Dr. Shedd never did see — and that is 
Mr. Dickinson's cash book; he had quite a bit of correspondence with 
Vermont going on at that time and 18 ^4 cents per letter counted up 
rapidly. It was almost as luxurious a sport as golf. 

The letter tells us that Mr. Dickinson read Hebrew, too, for mental 
diversion or stimulus; he read Greek, and delighted himself with the 
music of those old poets. Dr. Shedd admitted it was terribly hard to 
remember Hebrew. What strange pastimes ! 

"Those were pleasant days back in Burlington when we used to 
meet to talk and read and pray together. May we both be faithful and 
serve our blessed Master till He shall take us to praise Him around His 
throne!'' 

How few people take time to-day to write letters like it, or to think 
out the difference between real religious expression and cant! Some day 
this great city will awake to what it really owes to the fundamental 
piety of him who taught its fathers and grandfathers such infinitely deeper 
things than were found in his text-books! Mr. Dickinson did not impose 
phrases like that on other people, but he lived a religion like it for forty- 
five years in this community. All his life he observed the beautiful cus- 
toms of family worship and grace at meals. 

Another curious thing which I 
never could quite reconcile with 
the careful habits of this prudent 
young man, is this ivory miniature; 
once in a man's life, even a moderate 
man's life, he might buy a diamond. 
Mr. Holt had his picture painted 
about the same time — and he was 
married about the same time, too. 
"Hen." Steele was also similarly 
portrayed by Kimberley ; there were 
four of them done, apparently as a 
"club," but who the fourth one is I 
have not yet discovered. Perhaps 
the publication of this story will in- 
spire one of my readers to locate it. 
Miniature painting was then, as now, 
a most refined branch of the art of 
portraiture. But it is all mighty in- 
teresting, isn't it, as revealing the fine 
tastes of our fathers and grandfathers 
in times when old Jersey City was 
new and beautiful Jersey City, and 
before these fine homes all became 
crumbling ruins! 

When he started his school his gross income could not have been 
over $2,000 a year for several years, and cut of that there were some 
very substantial deductions; apart from expenses in the petty cash 




WM. L. DICKINSON, ABOUT 1839 

(From the Original Ivory Miniature by 

Kimberley) 



account which he opened I do not know what these were. But certainly 
he did not run a mint. The third year of his school there were about 50 
boys enrolled and the tuition fees did not exceed $ 1 per quarter. Yet 
he found time to give to a circulating library, to contribute articles to the 



PUBLISHED EVERY OTHER SATURDAY. 




FEBRUARY 20. 1841. 




THE ANALECT: 



SEMI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 

POETRY AND PROSE, 

ORIGINAL AND SELECTED, 

MUSIC, ENGRAVINGS, &.C. 




CONTENTS OF INI fRESENT NUMBER. . 

The Academy of Silence, ** X Ptcrei' low | 

Da lb, EtlecU ol Fopnlar Soup and ntlodlM, 7>»et*Clfrk £>. 

L.r, K Ou,»d ( hb.«,-AP« n ,, >,-' ( .'td.t -, . . . 

Do. - Do. Do. II, 6 

Do. Do. Do. Ill 8 

Do. Do. Do. IV, 10 

Do. Do. Do. V, - - 12 

Editorial, . - - -//Z>/*W-- 14 

The Crave — A Poem, 16 

Arable, • 7W7o»K!l- lb. 



JERSEY CITY 
PUBLISHED BY J. H. SPINNING, 



WASHINGTON AND MONTGOMERV.5TS. 
184 1 



Parable dd delivery. 



Price 13) Centa. 




(Mr. Dickinson's name is shown first on the list of contributors 
to "The Analect") 

local paper and to the "Analect," our local high-brow magazine ol 
poetry and prose, to actively participate in the great temperance propa- 
ganda which was then sweeping over the city, and to attend consistently 
to the duties of his church and its Sunday School. 

In the Lyceum building there was a library; his name was signed 
as librarian to the printed list of unreturned books advertised early in 
I 842. He might have attended the prize-fights pulled off by New York 
bruisers up there along Mill Road at that time had he chosen that sort 



of life in Jersey City. But he didn't. For one thing he wrote the 
prospectus of a Free Public Library in 1 842, instead. 

In the opening paragraph of his first circular letter of 1 839, he 
stated that "the constant aim of instruction at this institution will be to 
form those habits of industrious application, which will cling to the student 
through life, and influence him in any occupation which may be taken 
up." That is a pretty good thing to aim at even yet, and I venture to 
say without fear of successful contradiction that no man in Jersey City 
ever hit his mark more fairly. He stressed the development of the think- 
ing powers of his pupils' minds. 

The Dickinson Classical School itself was in a classical atmos- 
phere. The Lyceum building, erected at some time prior to 1 838, was 
put up primarily as the headquarters of the old Jersey City Lyceum, an 
institution over which Henry D. Holt grew fondly reminiscent in 1857, 
when he recalled the names of Barry, Van Santvoord, Campbell, Mor- 
gan, James, Bentley, Abbott, Edge, Gautier, Alexander as among those 
who measured wits there. The most prominent men of the city culti- 
vated their genius there. 

I wish Jersey City people would stop and look at that crumbling 
old building on the south side of Grand Street east of Warren, and think 
of it as Jersey City's manifestation of that enormously potential move- 
ment instituted by Josiah Holbrook of Derby, Connecticut, in 1826, to 
provide mental uplift to the mechanics and farmers of his neighborhood. 
By 1834 there were 3,000 such Lyceums all over the country, from 
Boston to Detroit, from Maine to Florida. A Connecticut Yankee was 
our first great citizen here; and as I have frequently shown, most of our 
best people then were other Yankees ; so it is not hard to understand 
why we had a lyceum too, along with the New Englanders, and as early 
as 1830, I think. Glenn Frank, in his July Century argument for "A 
Parliament of the People,'' says we are a people to-day who have lost 
the habit of community discussion; we are a chronic audience, and the 
audience habit is death to the political creativeness of a nation. He rea- 
sons splendidly for a restoration of the old New England town meeting 
and all that went with it. 

Our Lyceum was peculiarly a Yankee-land institution, and de- 
bating and oratorical contests among these transplanted New Englanders 
were as common, relatively, as moving pictures are to-night. And it 
complemented Mr. Dickinson's scheme of educating boys with regard 
to mental acuteness. I have seen two of the programs of the public exer- 
cises in his school for 1845 and 1846, autographed in full by Mr. 
Dickinson ; the documents are very interesting from a pedagogic stand- 
point. 

Mr. Dickinson was in that old Lyceum game, too. His "account of 
expenditures" showed that he paid his fees there, and there is plenty of in- 
ternal evidence that he contributed much more than his fees to the life 
of the organization, in the way of participation in debates, preparation of 
papers, and formulating its literary policy and program. 

In a few years the group that had made the old Jersey City Lyceum 
famous grew into more mature manhood — but Jersey City boys were 
coming on fast. Some other name had to be provided. Mr. Dickinson 

34 









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quite evidently had not changed his attitude about the value of the de- 
bating arena; so the next one to appear about 1848 was the Franklin 
Literary Association. Aug. A. Hardenbergh, Henry Vandewater, Leb- 
beus Chapman, Jr., W. Hardenbergh, D. S. Gregory, Jr., Samuel W. 
Davenport, John Eltringham, Alfred A. Hoyt, James Bridge, James 
Coleman Hart, Wm. Dodd, Louis Bonnell, these are some of the names 
I can definitely tie up with it, about 99.44 per cent, of them Dickinson 
Lyceum boys. W. L. Dickinson was their committee on criticism. 

The association had its popular Franklin Library, which we may 
more than surmise was simply another manifestation of Mr. Dickinson's 
constructive psychology. To their debates large audiences were at- 
tracted. Over 300 attended one in Washington Hall, Sept. 20, 1 849. 
Dr. Barry, ex-Mayor Dummer and other distinguished citizens used to 
come out to encourage the boys and get on the arbitration boards. 

It will bring the subject down a few more years to speak of the 
Franklin's successor — for it, too, lived its life and performed its purpose, 
as its group of young men grew up and dispersed into the pursuits of busi- 
ness or profession. The next one was the Erotetic Union. Some of 
you may know; I looked it up in the dictionary, it means interrogatory. 
They changed it in a month. The Erotetic came along in 185 7, and 
its roster, so far as I have been able to find names in the newspapers, reads 
like a Dickinson roll book. W. B. Williams, W. T. Van Riper, Henry 
S. Drayton, F. B. Betts, Nathaniel C. Slaight. On March 19 they 
rechristened the club the Jersey City Atheneum, and as such it had a 
wonderful career. 

Apparently they met every week in the winter time. C. H. Win- 
field was president late in 1857; Nathaniel C. Slaight, secretary; A. S. 
Hatch, treasurer; W. S. Yard, chairman executive committee. Besides 
those in the Erotetic list, these are some of the champions in debate: 
E. Fitzgerald, Jr., W. D. Cory, E. N. K. Talcott, Oscar O. Shackle- 
ton, J. W. Palmer, Jr. At the meeting of March 26 W. B. Williams 
referred with much feeling to the death of Samuel S. Ward, one of the 
John Dod Ward boys, who was drowned off Florence foundry. F. 
Miles, who was sailing with him, was saved. 

The Atheneum was at it constantly, hammer and tongs. "Were 
the Puritans of New England justified in their treatment of the Indians?'' 
"Which race has suffered the greater at the hands of the whites, the 
Africans or the Indians?" "Should atheists be allowed to give testi- 
mony in court?" Such were the diversions of youth in fine old Jersey 
City, and out of them they raised a splendid brood of capable and re- 
sourceful men who ornamented many professions and made the name 
of Jersey City famous. 

There was no special writer in 1 843 to tell us what they did at the 
parties, how charmingly the ladies were dressed, and how beautifully 
everybody danced, and how elegant the refreshments were; nor even to 
see that everybody's name got mentioned among "those present." But I 
think anyone will admit that an invitation to a Jersey City social func- 
tion in 1843 would be a very interesting document and sufficiently unique 
as to be entitled to newspaper space even as late as 1919. The Adver- 
tiser of those days was so very ponderous generally and felt its position 



37 



as political mentor pretty keenly; naturally I cannot find one single word 
in it telling of the function to which Mr. Dickinson was thus invited: 
"The pleasure of your Company is solicited to a Cotillion Party 
to be given at the Lyceum on Friday evening, Jan. 27, at 7 o'clock. 
J. R. Schuyler, J. Gautier, A. Van Santvoord, Committee. 
"Jersey City, Jan. 23, 1843." 

The invitation is not a very fine piece of typographical art, but the 
folded sheet upon which it was printed must have made its recipients sit 
up and take notice. The first page is embossed and perforated to simu- 
late fine lace, and men expert in such things tell me that the sheet was 
probably imported from France. 

Another social event in old Jersey City is suggested by the an- 
nouncement penned upon a daintily embossed edged sheet that "Mrs. 
Van Santvoord requests the pleasure of Mr. and Mrs. Dickinson's com- 
pany on Thursday evening at 8 o'clock. Monday, February 2." On 
the inside of the folded sheet, in Mrs. Dickinson's hand are three pen- 
cilled drafts of the regrets that had to be sent to Mrs. Van Santvoord. 
I don't know which form was sent, but circumstances beyond their con- 
trol prevented their acceptance in one of them. The Van Santvoords 
lived at 2 1 Grand Street ; Abraham Van Santvoord was a merchant at 
Cortlandt and West Streets, New York, but Jersey City was the fashion- 
able place for wealthy commuters. Lower Grand Street was then the 

home of real aristocracy. 

One of the firm friends of 
Mr. and Mrs. Dickinson was 
Mrs. Barrow, whose portrait is 
here shown in the turban with- 
out which she was never seen. 
On the south side of Wayne 
Street, between Jersey Avenue 
and Barrow Street, stand two 
large white houses with big pil- 
lars in front. In early times, 
these were the only houses on 
the whole block, with lovely 
gardens and greenhouses extend- 
ing in the rear through to Mer- 
cer Street. In the house near 
Jersey Avenue lived two Van 
Vorst sisters, Juha and Antoin- 
ette. Dr. and Mrs. Barrow 
lived in the one nearer Barrow 
Street, and after Dr. Barrow's 
death Mrs. Barrow spent the 
rest of her life there with her 
sister, Mrs. Craig. Mrs. Bar- 
row was a stately lady of the 
fine old type, suitable to the grand house, the large rooms and the house- 
hold ordered in her quiet, high fashion. John Turnbull, her old Scotch 
gardener, took pride in his flower beds and greenhouses. The kitchen 




MRS. ELIZA BARROW 
The Widow of Dr. Wm. Barrow 



38 



was immense, with a flagged floor, and all the cooking was done at an 
cpen fireplace on spits or in a Dutch oven placed to reflect the heat upon 
the roasts. On the opposite side of Wayne Street the block was entirely 
open, a field sloping upward to a hill at Jersey Avenue. On this hill 
stocd three very large willow trees — once shadowing the Van Vorst 
farmhouse. How beautiful was Wayne Street then, and how sadly 
changed in appearance at the present time! 

Dancing was not an unknown art, indeed, even though Jersey City 
of those times was much given to serious things. I have a delicious bunch 
of old letters written from Jersey City as far back as 1838-9; the 
young ladies who wrote them tell a great deal of their reading society 
and their program for that winter. The Misses Dummer, Holmes, 
Winter, Mony, Webb, De Witt, Gautier, Dodd, Cory flit through the 
pages constantly. One of them tells of their New Year's callers and 
of a dance she attended and of the beginning of a beautiful romance. 

Mr. Dickinson, so far as I know, did not advertise dancing as one 
of the advantages of his Lyceum Classical School, but E. B. Conway 
did. Mr. Conway, according to the papers of September, 1 849, held 
forth in the Lyceum every Tuesday and Friday afternoon at 3:30. He 
would teach "every fashionable mode of dancing, and a graceful and 
correct deportment.'' On the first Tuesday of each month he gave a 
soiree. Besides this, "the pupils with their parents will have the privilege 
of attending Mr. Conway's soirees at the Apollo, New York City." 
The favorite dance in fashionable European circles at the time, Mr. 
Conway stated, was what was known as the "Scotch"; Jersey City could 
dance it, too. 

In some of my earlier articles on the intellectual aspects of early 
Jersey City I have referred to that talented group of young men who 
made the town famous for its literary and scholastic attainments. Among 
the poets of the place was Abiel Abbott, "A. A." by nom de plume; 
he had two sons and one daughter, all highly gifted. The sons were 
students at the Lyceum, and Ruth went to Miss Chadeayne's, I believe. 
The family was a shrine for kindred souls for years, and especially for 
those who cultivated the musical art. 

The Telegraph gave quite considerable notice to an amateur con- 
cert arranged by John M. Abbott and his sister, Ruth, on June 29, 
1849, in Iroquois Hall. It was heralded editorially as "a splendid ex- 
pression of native-born genius." Practically all the town was there. 
Miss Abbott sang with, "a peculiarly sweet and touching voice," and 
her selection especially noticed was "Wind of the Winter Night." 
A. Moulton sang "The Light of Other Days" and "The Sea King." 
John M. Abbott was the pianist. Dr. Durrie performed his part of a 
duet upon the flute and with much taste. L. Wilder sang "The White 
Squall" and "The Old Arm Chair." 

It wasn't strictly true that all the talent was entirely native-born 
genius, for Dr. Durrie was a New Englander, who advertised his pro- 
fession as a homeopathic physician at No. 2 Grand Street in 1 848, and 
I believe was the pioneer here in his school. He was not only a good 
physician, but a good flutist, and he is further distinguished as the father 
of another Doctor Durrie, a most sympathetic reader of these essays of 

39 



mine into the misty realms of ancient Jersey City. L. Wilder came here 
from Baltimore in 1848, with a background of 20 years' experience 
there, as a teacher of vocal music, and was on the staff of the Dickinson 
Lyceum as an instructor in singing. 

John M. Abbott died at 39 years of age after a most brilliant 
career as a musician, and was well known all over the country of his day. 
He had a big black moustache and imperial of unusual characteristics, 
for which he was almost as renowned as for his musical skill. 

"D. Scott's entertainments" 
were always well attended. His 
prologues were considered so 
uproariously funny, because of 
local "gags." People went 
willingly to hear somebody else 
stung. He called his shows 
serio - comic ; local musicians 
furnished the serious stuff, and 
he the comedy. James Gamble 
sung about "The Newfound- 
land Dog" and "The Old Arm- 
Chair" on Tuesday March 6, 
1849, in Iroquois Hall; Gen. 
E. R. V. Wright sang "Three 
Ages of Love" ; Joseph Dixon 
did some recitation, title not 
given ; Wm. A. Townsend ren- 
dered Hood's beautiful poem, 
"Eugene Aram" ; but Scott was 
the centre about which it all 
revolved. Joseph Dixon, besides 
being a capable amateur enter- 
tainer gets prominently before 
the practical people of 1 848 as 
the inventor of a new process of steel casting, which he exemplified at the 
Adirondack Steel Works in Jersey City. The capacity was one ton 
per day. He had an exhibit at the American Institute at the Battery 
that year, and the Institute awarded him a silver medal. The Telegraph 
said a man who had invented a rocking-chair or scented soap might have 
gotten that much, and resents the silver medal as pretty poor recognition 
for a gentleman of Mr. Dixon's genius. Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Dixon 
were intimate friends for many years, and among the reminiscences of 
that friendship are stories of the spiritualist seances they attended at Mr. 
Dixon's, northeast corner of Barrow and York streets ; of the wonderful 
orchestrion he built, of the big crucible full of red fire set off one night 
in the first Lincoln campaign ! 

In the late 40's Fannie Kemble, the great actress, was much talked 
of in Jersey City's society. The ladies here were doubtless as familiar 
with her unfortunate domestic affairs and her eccentricities as they were 
with her distinction. She lived, in 1 849, in an obscure Battery Place 
hotel, a very beautiful woman of 37. On St. Patrick's Day of that 




TOSEPH DIXON. 



40 



year she came across to Jersey City, exciting no little attention on the 
ferryboat, and rode out Grand Street. Imagine the flutterings at the 
curtain hangings as she swept by in her "elegant dark riding habit and 
her fur or silk riding hat" (the editor couldn't say which material it was). 
She went down to old Communipaw to see where Irving got his inspira- 
tion to write his Knickerbocker's history of New York. 

Our local papers about the same time were telling of the profes- 
sional feud between the tragedians Macready and Forrest, and of their 
performances in New York — for the ladies of Jersey City had to go to 
the theatre in New York then because Frank Henderson hadn't com- 
pleted his burlesque circuit arrangements at that time. The feud cul- 
minated in a real tragedy on Thursday, May 1 0, 1 849, at the Astor 
Place Theatre, when seventeen people were killed in a riot because of 
the bitterness between the actors' partisans. That would make some 
gossip even to-day. 

Another phase of the fine life of old Jersey City found expression 
in its interest in good pictures, particularly of women's interest, and it 
is curious to know how so many highly meritorious things found their 
way into the famous drawing rooms. The American Art Union, whose 
headquarters were at 297 Broadway, New York, for many years, was 
an organization of contributors at $5 each. Every year there was a 
fine exhibition of pictures by the most celebrated artists of the times; one 
of them would be reproduced in steel engraving, and every subscriber 
would get a copy of that. Then the sum total of the contributions, less 
"operating expense," would be used for the purchase of paintings shown 
at the exhibition, and these in turn would be drawn by lot by the sub- 
scribers. 

For instance, in 1 848, Mrs. Henry J. Taylor, "lady of our worthy 
Mayor," drew Peele's "Bird Nesting." "It will look fine in her parlor," 
said the Telegraph, "and we believe this is not the first Mayor of Jersey 
City who has been fortunate in the art business." John Garrison's 
daughter drew "The Fruit Girl." Mrs. Doremus drew No. 63, "Land- 
scape." Wm. T. Rodgers drew a fruit piece. A painting of Snake 
Hill was shown at the exhibit that year, and "it should have come to 
Jersey City, but a gentleman of New York was so fortunate as to secure 
it." C. K. Sutton and D. Thomas of Cottage Row were among the 
Jersey City people who drew pictures in 1 849. 

John H. Voorhees, editor of the Telegraph, was the local booster 
for the A. A. U. in 1849, and he tells us that the exhibition was "a 
pleasant little place of rest and thought while enjoying the view of the 
beautiful works of such painters as Leutze, Church, West, Inness, Flagg, 
Gigneux, etc., etc." Very many of the pictures were drawn in assumed 
names, and the Telegraph used to publish facetious speculations about 
"Miss Gashene," and other anonymities who were lucky in Jersey City. 

One man who did much to embalm the loveliness of our fine old 
Jersey City forebears was William J. L. Millar. He was categoried in 
the '49 directory as an artist — and I have seen a picture or two of his 
taking that would lead me to the opinion that the designation was cor- 
rect. He boarded on Grand Street, near Barrow, but he beguiled his 
■sitters for "daguerreotype miniatures" at the corner of Montgomery 



and Hudson Streets — that's the Fuller building to-day — in a pleasant 
room in the third story, "where you can have a fine view of the bay and 
your likeness for $1 and up. Go and see. Think of your beautiful 
countenance, radiant with hope, painted by the very finger of light upon 
the silver surface of the daguerreotype plate!" 

Why, to go through those musty records of early Jersey City, one 
is almost forced to the conclusion that the art of alluring advertising, as 
well as of beautiful living is — well, not an altogether new one! 




MRS. CELIA GOSS DICKINSON 



Nothing has happened in history to compare with the gold fever 
of 1 849. Jersey City suddenly went mad over it, just like the rest of 
the United States where men folk lived. The story of the part played 
by the men of this town in that craze is too big a thing to be told here. 
There is enough of it to fill another book or two. But as it affected the 
fortunes of the Dickinson Lyceum Classical School at that time, and 
more and more deeply affected them as the great industrial, commercial 
and political questions which grew out of the California fever become 

42 



more acute, I venture to devote a few pages to my Dickinson Cen- 
tenary story to it. 

It is impossible for me to say just how many men left Jersey City 
for California at that time. There is no institution in the town which 
has ever bothered itself with such a trifling thing as the history of her 
sons who helped found that new empire in the sunset. I should say per- 
haps that at least one able-bodied man in every fifteen "got it," and 
then with the "yellow" fever burning in his blood started on that long, 
long trail, beset with perils of inconceivable magnitude, and with horrors 
and hardships incredible. And the other fourteen out of the fifteen — if 
there was so great a proportion who stayed home — talked California 
constantly, read it in the newspapers, heard of it in shows, danced the 
California polka, went to California lectures. The phases were un- 
ending. 

One cannot attempt to describe the ferment the place was in, nor 
to give the full Lst of those hardy adventurers, but it is natural enough 
to see among the names of the earliest Argonauts some who were on 
Mr. Dickinson's roll books. Some of his boys of 1839 and '40 were 
stalwart men in 1849, and men who were already using those "powers 
of the mind" for the development of which the Dickinson school was 
established. California was an adventure, and they were ready to take 
the chance. 

The expedition that created the most excitement at the time, and 
whose reactions were most vividly reflected in the home papers for a long 
while afterward, was the one which sailed in the schooner Anthem, a 
216-ton craft, about as capacious as a half dozen modern freight cars, 
or a couple of Morris Canal boats. The Winfield Mining Association 
was aboard her, thirty-five in the passenger list and crew — most of them 
members of Iroquois Lodge of Odd Fellows of Jersey City, when she 
sailed on Jan. 11,1 849. Jonathan J. Durant was president of the 
association; R. M. Folger, secretary; W. E. Greene, treasurer. The 
names of F. W. Turner, C. W. Nichols, H. Greene, J. B. Overton, 
J. B. Drayton and G. B. Freeland are also mentioned at other times in 
connection with this historic cruise, almost as memorable in its way as that 
of the Mayflower. Although I do not ordinarily invest in wildcat mining 
stocks, I should like to invest in a certificate of the Winfield Mining 
Association. Has anyone in Jersey City got one to sell ? 

It took nearly six months to reach San Francisco. God only knows 
what they suffered in that cockle-shell of a boat in that time! We know 
from one of the survivors of the journey that scurvy was rampant — and 
scurvy is not a very nice disease, either while you have it or when you 
are convalescing. Apparently most folks who had it in those days 
would have preferred death to it. 

William H. Gautier (son of Dr. T. B. Gautier) was, I believe, 
one of Mr. Dickinson's early pupils, and went out on the Griffin, sailing 
from Jersey City, March I 7, 1 849. It was widely exploited as the 
first exclusively "Jersey" ship, and as the best equipped expedition that 
had yet put to sea. A fine library of standard authors, "contributed 
by a gentleman of Jersey City," was among the multitudinous com- 
forts — and, of course, he who put that one in was a gentleman ; but 

43 



there were so many gentlemen listed in Jersey City's first directory, and 
I would dearly like to know this one's name. 

There was a wonderful time in the town that Day of St. Patrick, 
when the Griffin sailed — and then the tragedies began. Mr. Gautier 
wrote about the gossip going round San Francisco over the sufferings 
of the Apollo party, which left Jersey City in the middle of January. 
They ran short of provisions. That sounds like starvation, when no 
corner grocery is handy. "You would not believe the terrible story'' 
is the way he glosses the thing. 

I know that S. R. Chazotle was on the Apollo — and the name of 
Chazotte is in Mr. Dickinson's roll book and ledger, too. Before 
disaster overtook them they were in Rio, and he wrote a chatty letter 
about their fun there ; and a fellow passenger wrote another letter to a 
Newark paper to say what a fine young fellow S. R. was and how he 
read the Episcopal service every Sunday. Our local barber, Morrell, 
went on the Apollo ; so also did a colored man employed in the family 
of Dudley S. Gregory. 

Mr. Gautier's party did not reach their goal until Sept. 29, 
1 849 — twelve days more than six months en route. After a smashing 
storm in early August, Black Bob, Chancellor Halsted's former cook, 
had died — "and now the grub was awful" — musty pork, musty old 
horse, musty pilot bread and wormy dried apples were mentioned among 
the fundamental articles of menu. The library wasn't mentioned; I 
suppose the books were battered at each other's heads when they got 
sick of the eternal questioning about when they were going to get ashore. 

This story of the Apollo did not get back to Jersey City until Nov. 
13, 1849. George Dodd's folks probably learned for the first time 
then that he was seriously stricken and was trying to get home; and 
George Nicholl's people, too, heard about his having given up (phys- 
ically) and was routed back to Jersey City. Both these names are in 
the Dickinson records. Mr. Gautier told of the Brooklyn, which sailed 
from here in January, having just arrived in San Francisco after a ter- 
rible voyage and of ten of her passengers who had died of scurvy after 
being carried ashore on stretchers. 

Another correspondent tells of "Russ" Dummer. He, too, was a 
Dickinson boy. I feel pretty sure Russ was at the mines beyond Stock- 
ton in April or early in May, 1849, and he probably went out over 
the Isthmian route. A Colonel Zabriskie is frequently mentioned in this 
California correspondence as the leader of a party which cut quite a 
dash in Panama in their efforts to get to San Fianciscc; and the follow- 
ing September "Colonel Zabriskie of New Jersey" was secretary of 
the meeting held in that city to discuss a city charter. 

Dr. John M. Cornelison, then of 62 Sussex Street, had a son at 
the Dickinson School ; I cannot definitely say that he was the same son 
— J. H. — who sailed on the barque "Hannah Sprague" in the spring 
of 1849. He went out with the California Association and they sailed 
the long and dreary journey around South America. And they did 
another thing. They celebrated Independence Day on board the "Han- 
nah Sprague," and posted the account of their celebration back to New 
York from Rio Janeiro on July 1 3, including the oration of Alfred 

44 





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O -2 

a" 



* £•' 






-3 



jto 



45 



Wheeler, Esq., and the text of a poem about "The Yallow Fever." 
The whole thing was printed in pamphlet form and circulated in Jersey 
City. The Telegraph editor acknowledged his copy Sept. 25, 1849; 
mine must have miscarried in the mails, although I have no doubt it will 
turn up later. 

That Dr. Cornelison must have had quite an anchor to the west- 
ward crops out curiously in a dinner given by him and a company of 
forty-nine other of our leading citizens at the American Hotel, with 
Rodman M. Price, Esq., "just returned laden with some of the riches 
of California" ; Senator Gwinn of California, and the poet, Cabel Lyon, 
as guests of honor. The last named had sailed from Jersey City, Jan. 
1 3, 1 849, on the ship "Tarohnta," and he was reported as answering to 
the toast at this dinner, "The Ladies of Jersey City: As beautiful and 
virtuous as their men are brave and philanthropic." That was pretty 
neat! Edward Gamble, once a Dickinson boy, and Gen. E. V. R. 
Wright, inspired the community singing at the gathering. I guess Walter 
Dear's preincarnation must have had his I'll ole Rotary Club going in 
'49, too. 

Another one of the Dickinson boys to go early was Adolphus S. 
Gilbert. He was the son of Hiram S. Gilbert, Esq., a "real estate 
agent contractor" residing, according to the 1849 directory, at 2 
Pavonia Place, Pavonia. Adolphus entered Dickinson in 1 840. He 
arrived in California about Aug 30, 1 849. I do not know which one 
of the routes he took. The first thing the youthful Mr. Gilbert did 
when he landed in San Francisco was to send a letter back home and 
a marked newspaper telling of the new Baptist Church, the first in 
California, I believe. Perhaps the Baptists hereabouts may know that 
a Jersey City preacher, Rev. O. C. Wheeler, and his wife started the 
ecclesiastical history of their denomination in a sheeting and scantling 
bungalow. I confess I didn't know that the long arm of our local 
history reached that far until I saw it in the papers. 

Another Jersey City gold-seeker refers very briefly to a Rev. Mr. 
Roberts, formerly a Methodist preacher in Jersey City, who had his 
tabernacle all framed and ready for raising. Perhaps some of my 
Methodist friends, too, might know about him. Mr. Gilbert also fur- 
nished us with news of the activities of Rev. Timothy Dwight Hunt, a 
Congregationalist minister, and who is known in California Congregation- 
al annals as the first Protestant preacher in the State. He must have had 
much to do with that early Congregational Church on J. W. Greene's 
corner in Jersey City, and was a friend of the plenty of Congregational - 
ists who furnished considerable membership to other churches here. He 
married Mary Hedges of Newark in 1843, and the same year went 
as a missionary to the Sandwich Islands. 

Mr. Dickinson's younger brother, Henry C, went, I am told, in 
the early winter of '48-'49, by the Panama route. He stayed in Cali- 
fornia four years, and came back without much impedimenta in the 
mineral line. He was one of the instructors in the classical school, and 
a very much liked man. Two extremely rare relics of his trip are pre- 
served to this day by his nephew, W. H. Dickinson. The first is a 
lithograph picture of San Francisco, taken in 1849. It shows about a 

46 




47 



hundred idle ships moored at the entrance to the harbor; some careened 
and the water washing over them, evidently abandoned by those who never 
would go back in them. The other is a view in 1 854, and is doubly in- 
teresting because it is a souvenir from his companion on the journey out 
in 1849, and who was still there in 1854 — E. M. Abbott, another 




IIF.XRV C DICKINSON' 



one of the Dickinson boys. In the lower right hand corner it is auto- 
graphed "from Ned," and Ned also has notated the principal buildings 
on the margin of the print. That, too, is a "rare" piece of Cahforniana. 
The attendance book has this glad note: "1851 — Sep 4. No school. 
H C Dickinson returned from California." 

But isn't it curious to think of all this pioneer history of California, 
made by men of Jersey City, by splendid young fellows trained in the 
Dickinson school of applied commonsense; written by the same crowd, 

48 



and printed in Jersey City newspapers, and then hidden in Jersey City 
attics or treasured by some few enthusiasts for Jersey City's glorious past ! 

In one of the earlier pages on the Dickinson Classical Institute I 
referred to the fact that the day came when its books and its doors were 
closed, and I have not yet been able to find anyone who could tell me 
why they were never reopened. Certainly the apparent abandonment of 
such an important institution ought to have some explanation, and ought 
to have been the occasion of some local interest or inquiry. It is no 
real answer to say that Mr. Dickinson wanted to study law, or that he 
wasn't getting support enough to provide patrimony for a couple of 
promising boys whose future he and Mrs. Dickinson had to consider. 

The directory of 1857-1858 carried a full-page advertisement 
telling of the activities in the two departments of the school, one for young 
lads and one for more advanced students, but no hint at all of an early 
dissolution. But just read the newspaper literature of the decade before 
the Civil War; then it will possibly dawn on the reader what the real 
explanation was. The wonder is not that it was closed in 1858, but 
that it kept open until 1858. 

In this series of sketches of our ante-bellum Jersey City I have 
shown, I think, the insistency and persistency of the New England motif; 
Mr. Dickinson was only one of the group of people who tried to make 
their duties as citizens square with their religious ideals. They could 
not divest themselves of either. When in 1856 the report was circulated 
that a "Republican Association" was about to be formed, the Telegraph 
wondered "what has Jersey City done that she should be punished 
with such a dose. We have had the cholera, the smallpox and a variety 
of other plagues" — but these "black Republicans" were the worst yet! 
(The Telegraph had then become the exponent of the Copperhead 
group.) 

Mr. Dickinson was nominated April 1, 1856, as a Whig candi- 
date for Alderman in the Third Ward. I cannot find that he was ever 
elected, but it was not necessary for him to be Alderman in order to more 
thoroughly impose his New England ideals in Jersey City. Dr. Dick 
has never boasted about being the son of an Alderman, anyhow, so I 
suspect that his father was elected to stay home that time. 

Going back to the early 50's the price the town was paying, in- 
tellectually and spiritually, for its residential popularity commences to be 
dimly reflected in the local papers. So long as abolition was a mere 
"bug" with which a few New England enthusiasts were bit, their neigh- 
bors didn't mind, and it was a thing they could tolerate pleasantly. But 
the town had filled in with new people who never were real neighbors 
to the New Englanders. The fugitive slave law, the Kansas-Nebraska 
bill, the Dred Scott decision — they were some of the high spots in the 
politics of the period when the country just seemed bent upon going mad, 
the decade that opened with those great debates in which Clay, and 
Webster, and Dayton, and Cass, and Benton figured. 

James Buchanan as a candidate for the presidency commenced to 
loom up on the local Democratic horizon early in March, 1 856. When 
the Telegraph "discovered" him, it immediately went into a paroxysm. 
He was slapped on the back; called "old buck"; "border ruffian" clubs 



were to be formed all over Jersey City. He was not then in the coun- 
try; he did not come back from his ministry to England until April 25, 
when he passed through Jersey City on his way to Wheatland, Pa., 
attended by Senator Thompson, Hon. A. C. M. Pennington "and other 
distinguished gentlemen." 

The "standing head" of the Telegraph of that time was some four 

fciMOCBATIC CANDIDATES. 



^HA^ 




AND 



AYE POE'D THEM IN '44 
"WE TleJxC'I) THEM IN 'fi2 
AND TYt'LL EUCE 'EM IN 'fi.fi, 
BUCHANAN CAMPAIGN BADGE 

inches of matter entitled "Reasons why we believe in The Fugitive 
Slave Law of 1850"; and a few other things of that particular brand 
of kultur. The issues were sharpening in definition: Buchanan and his 
adherents wanted the kind of a Union wherein the South could bullyrag 
the North about the $88,000,000 profit made out of trade which it 
would divert somewhere else if the Abolitionists didn't keep their ever- 
lasting mouths shut about slavery. "Fanaticism and Abolition — simply 
other names for burglary, robbery, larceny!" The Telegraph was the 



50 



virtuous and sympathetic champion in Jersey City of the downtrod 
and despoiled slave-owner. 

On the part of the New Englanders in Jersey City, Rev. O. P. 
Frothingham whose church was at the southeast corner of Grove and 
Montgomery Streets, was a fairly capable champion. And he nettled 
the Copperheads in 1856. He made a speech at a William Lloyd 
Garrison meeting in New York on May 7 that was competent enough 
to draw the fire of the gifted editor of the New York Express. He de- 
voted about half a column of satire and scorn to dispose of Mr. Froth- 
ingham; and this was all reprinted in the Telegraph with this added 
applause from the Jersey City editor, "That's right, Mr. Express, hit 
him again. The clergyman spoken of would make a capital president 
of the Black Republican Club we are told is about to be organized in 
this city.'' The club was formed, too, in Park Hall on June 5 ; Dudley 
S. Gregory launched it; Mayor David S. Manners was its president; 
W. B. Williams, secretary, and Robert Gilchrist, Jr., A. A. Harden- 
bergh and O. P. Frothingham were the speakers. 

A little later, on June 27, there was another gathering of our 
Lincolnian friends of future years. The Telegraph said it was the debris 
of the Free Soil party of '48 ; it was composed of Free Soilers, stray 
Whig nondescripts, political eunuchs and hybrids — that was the fond, 
friendly way of naming such men as S. B. Ransom, A. H. Wallis, E. 
B. Wakeman, Stephen Quaife and John C. Morgan! They were offi- 
cers of the meeting and most of them were in Mr. Dickinson's circle of 
intimate friendships. This recital will show how the alignment was com- 
mencing to be drawn right here among our home folks. 

I venture to make another quotation from the Telegraph of that 
same period, and in doing so it should be borne in mind that the local 
paper was probably no more vicious than other copperhead papers of the 
day. This is not "picking" on Jersey City. The editorial was printed 
April 23, 1856, but apparently it did not have any serious effect on the 
lady or her book: 

"Harriet B. Stowe, Esq., one of the strong-minded disciples of 
Munchausen, the inventor of the Uncle Tom falsehood, is about to re- 
stultify herself by the perpetration of another piece of mendacity in the 
shape of a book on Slavery. Not content with having incurred the 
maledictions of all honest persons in the country by a wholesale dealing 
in prevarication, the man-woman courts a still greater depth of infamy, 
and she will certainly achieve it. Of course there will be found plenty 
of dafts who will eagerly peruse her pen-poison — for the fools are not 
dead yet — but all men and women of common sense will avoid her 
scribbling as Mrs. S.'s near relative (with cloven foot) is said to hate 
holy water. She is a disgrace to the country, a literary nuisance, and 
should be 'stowed' away in the darkest corner of Tophet." The book 
referred to was "Dred," which critics say was a better literary produc- 
tion than "Uncle Tom's Cabin." 

All through the Buchanan campaign Henry Ward Beecher was 
making speeches that glistered with his fiery eloquence, on the subject 
of slavery. The territory of Kansas and its fateful political destiny were 
paramount newspaper history at the time, and he attacked the subject 

51 



with the consummate purpose of a great prophet of old denouncing the 
iniquity of the slaveholders and scorching them with terrible invective. 
He furnished no small capital for the Telegraph; and his famous 
"Sharpe's rifle" propaganda is almost daily reflected in the pages of our 
local sheets. What the paper would have been filled with, had Mr. 
Beecher suddenly expired, I don't know. 

The purpose of the radicals, to use a mild term about Mr. Beecher 
and his friends, was to settle Kansas with people who would oppose the 
introduction of slavery then with whatever methods that might be thought 
necessary. Feeling ran a little high then, and a rifle was at least a part 
of the defensive outfit of the prospective Kansan. On March 22, 1856, 
the Telegraph was frothing at the mouth over the report of a meeting 
in North Church, New Haven, Conn., where Mr. Beecher must have 
made the people wild with his oratory. Individuals in his audience 
jumped to their feet and yelled out how many equivalents of Sharpe's 
rifles they would contribute. The Telegraph said that "several nigger- 
ites laughed so hard they actually tore their pantaloons and rolled on 
the floor." Either Mr. Beecher must have made some speech, or there 
must have been some nimble newspaper jester on the Telegraph — per- 
haps both. 

But — and here's the point for a Jersey City congregation — this is 
how the Telegraph concluded its tirade about the North Church meeting 
and Henry Ward Beecher: "We suppose such conduct in such a place 
is all correct, but we can't help thinking that if such professed clergymen 
and professed Christians don't at least get to Hell, why then the place 
might as well be abandoned and devoted to some other use. Verily, 
the cause of our Saviour must be poor pay when its own ministers for- 
sake the pulpit for such work." Henry Ward Shrieker, Sarah Ward 
Beecher, Saint Henry Beecher, Wad Beecher — these are some of the 
pleasing variants when it was customary to mention his name. 

The sublimated hatred of Mr. Beecher was shown in a screed 
entitled "The Gospel of Saint Henry," printed Sept. 20, 1856, a 
blasphemous paraphrase of eighteen verses from the sixth and seventh 
chapters of St. Matthew. I venture to quote two of them, particularly 
because they throw light upon that agitation over Kansas, and the reader 
may observe the imputations upon Mr. Beecher's sincerity in all his 
great work. 

Chap, vi, 6: Lay up treasures in Kansas lands, and shoot down all 
outsiders, unless they come among you as negro worshippers. 

Chap, vii, 7 : Let Southerners ask for Kansas lands and it shall 
not be given. If they knock at her door it shall not be opened unto them. 

That summer of '56 the copperhead propaganda sunk to unmen- 
tionable depths in order to prove that there were no such things as border 
ruffian outrages, no murders, no pillaging; that the vast sums of money 
alleged to be collected for the relief of Kansas sufferers never reached 
Kansas but were absorbed by the villainous firm of "Greeley, Garrison, 
Beecher, Satan & Co." 

Of course history has informed us differently. The Telegraph of 
July 31, 1856, informs us of the venomous and subtle preachers who, 
under the guise of lectures, are poisoning the minds of our virtuous people 

52 



here, and cites an instance which took place at the Reformed Dutch 
Church, Van Vorst. A supply to the pulpit in the vacation period for 
several Sundays "converted the sacred desk into a political rostrum, but 
the congregation last Sabbath, after he had finished his electioneering 
tirade about 'bleeding Kansas,' 'the higher law,' etc., gave him his 
walking papers. The only way to put a stop to this desecration is to 
'stop the fodder'." Of course that is simply quoted as the Telegraph's 
own opinion and interpretation of what happened in that church. 

All through this Buchanan year there are numbers of references 
to Mr. Beecher's dog. I am not yet sufficiently informed in the history 
of those times to say whether he really had a dog by that name, or whether 
that was the Telegraph's caricatury way of speaking of some human 
friend of Mr. Beecher's. However, old dog Noble's death was reported 
on Thursday, Oct. 1 6 ; that being near the time of the Pennsylvania elec- 
tions makes me suspicious of the canine. Reverend Doctor Rifle Beecher 
was reported as having attended him diligently in his last moments, and 
would preach his funeral sermon on Nov. 4 at the Church of the Holy 
Rifles before the remains were transferred to Salt River for interment. 

After the election, however, Mr. Beecher got a little rest, just a 
little; still there was one particularly cheerful effort directed at a favorite 
topic of his, to which I cannot refrain reference. It was entitled "Fre- 
mont Prayer Meeting Hymn.'' One stanza perhaps will be enough: 

Pray with all your might! 

Boggle not with trifles ; 
For the Lambs of Christ, 

Powder, ask, and rifles; 
'Bleeding Kansas' howl! 

For perhaps the story 
Hasn't got around 

In the land of glory! 

Now, a reference or two to some of the women of that day, who 
were in the public eye at the time will help to materialize the situation 
at the end of 1856. These quotations are made from two successive 
issues of the Telegraph, the first on Nov. 27. 

"A number of strong-minded females and soft-headed males are 
stultifying themselves in New York at what is called a Woman's Rights 
convention. The hybrids are great sticklers for free love, free niggers, 
free lunacy, and free amalgamation. Their audience is composed of 
abolitionists, infidels, shrews, vinegar wives, unwilling virgins, henpecked 
husbands, and chronic bloomers. If any of our readers wish to enjoy 
a hearty laugh, we would advise them to go to the New York Taber- 
nacle and hear the hermaphrodite donkeys bray." 

Then, after having boosted the audience with a Jersey City atten- 
dance in that sympathetic fashion, this piece of refined literature was 
published the next day: 

"Strange as it may appear, human beings with natural claims to 
masculinity are found who are sufficiently imbecile to sneak behind the 
hoops of the Stones, the Davises, the Anthonys, the Joneses, the Motts, 
the Blackwells, the Bloomers, the Roses, and other unsexed females, and 

53 



proclaiming Cupid a lunatic, to look through their granny's spectacles for 
the time when men will rock the cradle, administer paregoric, concoct pap, 
manufacture sugar teats, sing lullabys, deal out Godfrey's cordial, and 
spank the toothless juvenile. Those effeminate men and masculine women 
advocate Bloomerism, a new version of the Lord's prayer, a female ballot 
box, negro equality, amalgamation, Kansas aid societies, infidelity, 
unnatural reforms of all kinds, white cravated nurses, male chambermaids, 
female stage drivers, lady ostlers, virgin barkeepers, maiden midwives, 
young lady scavengers, unmarried mothers, and all sorts of impossibilities. 




MR. AND MRS. DICKINSON AND THEIR TWO BOYS 
(From an Insley Ambrotype, 1856) 

"Folly, absurdity and stolidity can go no further. The members 
of the Woman's Rights Association — with Wendell Phillips, Theodore 
Parker, and Horace Greeley for chaplains — furnish the laughing stock 
for sensible persons." * * * 

And all this is written just to explain why a Jersey City schoolmas- 
ter went out of business in 1 858 ! Is it too far-fetched to visualize our fine 
friend, calmly figuring it all out at the end of twenty years' devotion to 
his lofty idealism? The nation, as he saw it, was in the hands of those 
who were determined to do violence to it ; right around him, the town of 
his adoption was being steeped in copperhead propaganda. That new 
boy in the Dickinson family had to be trained for the presidency of the 
Lincoln Association and for his superb career in a grand ministry of heal- 
ing; how would you have solved the problem? Look for a more appre- 
ciative clientele, a new job? 



To Mr. Dickinson a school with his ideals must have seemed ter- 
ribly unfashionable, dreadfully out of place, as he confronted the Jersey 
City of 1858. So he closed up the Lyceum Classical Institute, but he 
did not, he could not, obliterate its spirit that marched grandly enough 
through the conflict which presently ensued, a spirit that is still living in 
Jersey City. 

Now let us digress for a moment or two from the cares of our dis- 
tinguished school teacher's life to one of the enterprises in which he found 
diversion, I feel very sure. On other pages I have developed the fact 




MISS CHADEAYNE'S SCHOOL 

of the deep-seated New England sentiment in Jersey City: this spirit 
was crystallized in the organization of the New England Society 
of Jersey City in 1857. Mr. Dickinson's name, as well as that of his 
brother's, appears as a member of its executive committee in 1 859. In 
1860 it suspended its annual festivities until 1865, and for the period 
of the Civil War its members identified themselves prodigiously with the 
large-hearted philanthropies that were the plain duties of all good citizens 
at home. The destitution and sickness, the care of wounded men, the 
needs of the soldiers constantly passing through the city — indeed the 
problems then were prodigious, too. 

Perhaps it will be sufficient to mention but one of the hundreds of 
public and private patriotic enterprises by which human suffering was 
alleviated in those years, for that one will suggest others to our readers 
whose memories may reach to that far past: the Union Fair held in the 
week beginning December 2, 1863. I mention it now, because Mr. 
Dickinson was secretary of the genera! committee — and this is his book 



55 




Mr. Dickinson Walter Parmly 

Mrs. Dickinson Mrs. Parmly Dr. Parmly 

AT SARATOGA SPRINGS, 1867 



56 



we are reading. It would take another book to hold the story of that 
great fair, which, by the way, was one of the rare occasions when the 
two political factions really did unite. The net receipts were $5,533. 
Ladies from the various churches of the city had charge of tables and 
booths; the "young ladies of Miss Chadeayne's school"; public school 
No. 3 (that was Mr. Dickinson's) ; the Jersey City Yacht Club, were 
represented. 



B 



mmm sxzb? 



TOR TBB B1NRPIT OP 

The Families of Volunteers, and the Relief of 
Widows Sl Orphans of Deceased Soldiers. 

TOBEHELDAT THE CITY HALL FORPIXDAYS. 

Beginning on WEDNESDAY, DEC 2, 1863. 

A.d.mit One. Ten. Cents. 



Mr. Dickinson was a Lincoln man. There were quite a few people 
in Jersey City who were not. Still, there were enough who thought as 
he did politically and intellectually, for lots of companionship and in 1 865 
we find, his old-home group taking up the thread again in this wise: 
"The society (of New Englanders of Jersey City) had been honored 
by the maledictions of secessionists and copperheads; now that the prin- 
ciples they stood for had been so signally vindicated, they proposed to 
resume their annual dinners which had been suspended since 1 860. And 
that dinner was a hummer. It was held at Taylor's Hotel on Fore- 
fathers' Day, December 22. Mr. Dickinson sat there with other Jersey 
City Vermonters — notably Revs. Wheelock H. Parmly and Hiram 
Mattison. Dr. Mattison dwelt very fondly in his speech upon the fact 
that his fellow-citizens from Vermont seemed to predominate. He might 
have fairly said preponderate. It gives us a nice point of view to know 
that Mr. Dickinson grew up in the company of such people; and by a 
strange chance we have pictorial evidence of this in the shape of a most 
interesting group taken on a summer holiday in 1867 at Saratoga 
Springs ! 

At the 1868 dinner he replied to a toast, "The Free Schools of 
New England." I wonder whether it was due to Mr. Dickinson's cosmo- 
politan outlook as the new county superintendent of schools, that made 
them change the name of the society from "Jersey City" to "Hudson 
County"! Here is the list of officers for that year: President, Z. K. 
Pangborn, Vermont; vice-presidents, James Leary, Maine; C. C. Gove, 
New Hampshire; James Warner, Vermont; B. D. Lazell, Massachu- 
setts; H. P. Hunt, Rhode Island; Charles Pearson, Connecticut; sec- 
retary, W. L. Dickinson, Vermont; treasurer, S. B. Ransom, Connecti- 
cut. Mr. Gregory made a great speech about the Yankees that night, 
too. At the I 870 dinner Mr. Dickinson had an address on "Education, 
Literature and Learning." 



57 



In 1 871 , Dr. J. J. Youlin was president, and W. L. Dickinson and 
Rev. Geo. Lewis, vice-presidents. A notable feature of that occasion 
was the entire elimination of speeches. Instead, the Harmonic Society 
run the entertainment — and here are the names of the singers: D. S. 
Gregory, Jr., Mrs. Vinton, Mrs. Giles Buckingham Wilcox (she is still 
living in Chicago), Mrs. Marrin, Mrs. Howe, Miss Bristol, Miss Snyder, 
Miss Clark, Miss Wood, Mrs. Howe; Messrs. Williams, T. C. Brown, 
W. E. Marrin, W. W. Keenan, W. Whittick and A. D. Joslin. Mr. 
Dickinson was its president in 1 872, and the dinner on Saturday, Decem- 
ber 21, "provided by Mr. Fisk was a model of profusion, luxury and 
elegant neatness." Everything was fine, including the dishes peculiar to 
New England, — brown bread, baked beans, pumpkin pies and dough- 
nuts, and even Major Pangborn forgot to make a "bloody shirt" speech 
in his contemplation of them. The dues were $10, which included two 
dinner tickets, and in order that we may understand the real social 
value of our home talent, we are advised that the dinners were no better 
at the New York organization, though the dues were the same. 

Very shortly after the closing of the Lyceum Classical Institute Mr. 
Dickinson applied himself to the study of law. It seems so trite to say 
that was what he did ; but can you imagine it is an easy thing to do, at 
forty years of age, to abandon the habits of a score of years and formulate 
your new program of life? After the manner of his years at the Uni- 
versity of Vermont, he kept books for the sake of the income, in hours 
which he had set apart for that purpose. As a pedagogie expert, he must 
have had theories on the qualities of a good student, for he was ready 
and was admitted to the New York bar in 1861. The breaking of the 
Civil War and its reaction on a professional career of that sort was not 
hopeful. Perhaps we can see it now as one of the Divinely appointed 
details of the 1 832 plan to save him for Jersey City! 

In 1859 and '60 he was an active member of the Board of Edu- 
ction, when the problem of the inadequacy of Jersey City's schools was 
a subject of common discussion. Of course, he had plenty of helpful 
suggestions while on the Board; the literature of the day tells of mani- 
festations of his practical mentality on the question. But he was born 
a teacher; and he had slim prospects as a lawyer at the particular juncture 
when they needed a new principal at No. 3 school in Bright Street. So, 
from 1861 until his death the city responded to the impact of his 
genius as an educator in the public school system. In 1 860, probably 
less than 3,000 children were in actual school attendance; in 1871, 
there were 12,000; in 1884, nearly 24,000. There was no effective 
grading until his plans were applied. In 1867 he was made county 
superintendent of schools, and he was retained as assistant superintendent 
of the city schools. In 1872, when Thomas Potter, then known as 
an energetic and shrewd business man, was president of the Board of 
Education, Mr. Dickinson was made city superintendent, and at that 
time the combination of the two men was hailed as a splendid augury for 
things educational in the town. 

How can any one write a story of William Leverett Dickinson and 
his relations to the people of Jersey City that would ever be adequate! 
On the day of his death, the local newspapers devoted a great deal of 

58 



space to a civic tragedy of so great import, and there was a sentence in the 
Journal's story that impressed me most profoundly: "To him more than 
to any one man is due the advancement and excellence of the public 
schools of this city and county." There is no rhetorical or oratorical pomp 
about the statement; it is a very plain assertion, very simply made. We 
look upon the imposing facades of our two beautiful high school buildings 
both designed by one of his "boys," who so fondly remembers him 
today and a thrill of pride is stirred as we contemplate them. "William 
L. Dickinson" at the entrance to one; "Lincoln" at the other. One per- 
petuates the memory of our own first citizen; the other, of the first 
American. And as we study them is there not discernible in the lives 
of both men a certain identity of characteristics by which we have come 
to measure our popular heroes? 

Looking across the eighty years that have elapsed since William 
L. Dickinson came here, we read his first prospectus: "the constant aim of 
the institution should be to form those habits of industrious application 
which will cling to the student through life, and influence him in any occu- 
pation which may be taken up." How closely he lived to that ideal, it 
would be "wasteful and ridiculous excess" to argue about: that magnifi- 
cent generation in Jersey City before the Civil War was nurtured in the 
Lyceum Classical School. He preached and practiced "habits of ex- 
actness and punctuality" in 1879, and was still at it in 1883. The 
deeply spiritual nature of his life and his capacity for forming lasting 
friendships was just as recognizable at the University of Vermont as it 
was by his own boys at the Lyceum or by those of his teachers and pupils 
of the last years of his life. No one in Jersey City needs to be argued 
with, to be convinced that the idea of real popular education in Jersey 
City began when Mr. Dickinson arrived; but we do need to be told, for 
we forget so easily. 

Certainly no one could have a finer ideal of the teacher's profession: 
he once said in a public address that "the most precious interests of 
society are committed to the teacher ; therefore among the wise he should 
be the wisest, among the faithful he should be the most faithful, among 
the good he should be the best." And when he rounded that sentence, 
we know now, it was uttered with the simple humility of a man who 
realized the sublimity of his vocation and the inadequacy of its fulfillment 
until he had answered the last clear call. 

It has been a great privilege to examine many of Mr. Dickinson's 
papers, among them a number of topical compositions or essays, all auto- 
graphed in his curious back-hand script. They were evidently prepared 
as the bases of addresses to his teachers. In one of them he seems to 
have arrayed the worries of a teacher's life — which I fully recognize from 
the angle of one who made plenty of them — and as he unrolled the familiar 
picture of the school room, I can imagine the interest and sympathy of 
his listeners, particularly when he came to that part when he seemed to 
have put his fatherly arm around the shoulder of some discouraged or 
despondent teacher — and the world was instantly made brighter and better 
by the contact of his sympathy and helpfulness. He always had the 
alchemy that would resolve worries. 

I leaf over one of his addresses at this moment, as I write these 



59 



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60 



lines. Perhaps some of my readers may have heard him speak it forty 
years ago. Order in the Schoolroom, is its prosaic title. With what 
fine Stocktonian humor does he delineate the martinet, the rigorous dis- 
ciplinarian, the vacillating one, the nervous one! As he developed his 
story his hearers doubtless had chosen their parts in the comedy; but 
before the descriptions were finished, I fancy that most of his teachers 
must have felt that the trouble with their troubles was that they never 
really happened after all ! And by the time he had crystallized or sum- 
marized his address with that clear cut, constructive commentary for 
which he will be so delightfully remembered, — well, teaching as a pro- 
fession really looked up quite a bit ! 

Here is another paper, written in 1879; it bears no title — but the 
document does not need labeling. It is a survey of the relation of the 
school teacher to public morality, and in it Mr. Dickinson handles with 
exquisite delicacy a subject which he might have avoided entirely had 
he so desired. Surely his friend Father Kelly would have applauded it, 
had he been in the audience that day. Mr. Dickinson was looking out 
at that particular time upon a world that was pretty full of Dennis 
Kearneys, of terrorists of different sorts, of breaking banks, of indus- 
trial oppression, of adulterated foods, and "even whiskey has become 
such an abominable decoction of drugs and poisons as to be ten-fold 
more than ever the brew of the devil!" He was pleading with his 
teachers to set the world right again by starting with the children in 
their schoolrooms; the world needed honesty so much. "The teacher's 
work is so great, so important, so valuable that this life contains no re- 
wards that are a sufficient compensation therefor." 

It is fine to read in 1919 Mr. Dickinson's essay on teaching history. 
Many of the events recorded in school histories, he thought, had no 
more importance to the ordinary student than the quarrels among the birds 
and beasts of the forest. History should be taught topically, and he 
thought he could give about ten dates which would be all that an ordinarv 
pupil should be required to remember in connection with the history of 
the United States. No wonder everybody loved him! Children were 
interested in people, he said; so he suggested, in association with those 
dates, the names of the men and stories of their lives, who personified, as 
it were, those epochal dates, from Columbus down to Lincoln, and then 
the grouping of facts around the individuals and the great events they 
stood for. He told in that same address how to teach geography, and 
grammar, and drawing, and arithmetic. I declare it looks so simple 
tonight, that I wonder why some teachers make so much fuss about it all ! 
Perhaps some who read these lines were in the graduating class of 
June, 1882, to which Mr. Dickinson delivered one of the most beautiful 
of the classical addresses with which he rounded out many of these occa- 
sions; his theme was woven around the love of books, and in it, too, he 
was telling the happy young men and maidens whose faces were aglow 
with the rosy light of Commencement Day, the allegory of his own 
life. He told of the companionship they could have with the master mind? 
of the world; Tennyson would cross the wild Atlantic and sing to them; 
Motley would sit beside them and tell the story of the Netherlands; Ban- 
croft would squeeze his eighty years of study and experience and unroll 

61 



it in a few evening hours; — but with it all there would be no happiness 
except in righteous and unselfish devotion and direction of the wisdom 
so acquired. "You are not your own, you belong to your friends, you 
belong to the community, you belong to your country, you belong to 
God." Mr. Dickinson had only one more year for Jersey City, for 
this world, at that time; he had then been 44 years practicing that religion 
here ; and I have never yet seen anywhere the faintest suggestion that he 
was tired of belonging to others than himself, or ever weary of owing 
the finest duty to his community. 

How many of those of the class of 1 883, at the eleventh annual 
high school commencement, will be reminded of his address to them, a 
most wonderful document, it seems to me, as it is suggested now? The 
times were sodden with serious and vexing things industrially and politi- 
cally. And Mr. Dickinson's last message to a graduating class was a 
sublime tribute to the glory of honest toil and patient endeavor. "Remem- 
ber, on the other hand, that the arts of deceit grow weaker and less 
effectual every time they are practiced. Soon the deceit is abhorred, 
and the deceiver is shunned. He who clings to honesty grows stronger 
every day. Every new acquaintance becomes a new friend, so that the 
path to success in life grows rapidly clear of all doubts and perplexities." 



And that is the "history" of William Leverett Dickinson as I 
interpret it from the sentiments of scores of people — some of whom remem- 
ber him fondly for the well-deserved licking they got (even that is 
considered a mark of distinction today, to have been threshed by so 
great a man ! ) ; others have told me how he sat in the forms with them 
when they were tiny children, and went through the lesson the teacher 
was blackboarding ; others remember him for his snappy entrance into 
the schoolroom to demand immediate replies to catch questions or ortho- 
graphic puzzlers; every one treasures his or her own particular jewel of 
remembrance, whose lustre the years will never dim ! 



62 




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63 



DICKINSON CLASSICAL SCHOOL, 1839-1858 



A list of those who attended the Dickinson Classical School on 
Grand Street, Jersey City, between the years 1839-1858. The years 
show dates of entrance. It is believed to be as complete and as accurate 
as the reading of the school records may be interpreted, and is therefore 
subject to errors and omissions. 



1839 
Abbott, John M. 
Alexander, James 
Alexander, Joseph 



Hoyt, Reuben 
Jordan, Conrad N. 
Morgan, Daniel 
Narine, Johnson D. 



Brill, Joseph 
Duffie, Peter 
Franks, B. Mortimer 
Gautier, Eugene 




THE SEVEN GREGORY BOYS 
(From a Gurney Daguerreotype About 18S8) 



1— George W 
?.— Dudley S. 
3 — Walter 



4 — Charles E 

5 — Benjamin 

6 — Archibald Mclntyre 



7 — David Henderson 



Danforth, Edward 
Garr, Julian 
Garr, Robert 
Gilchrist, Robert 
Gregory, Dudley S. 
Gregory, George 
Hardenburgh, Lewis 



Southmayd, Henry 
Varick, Theodore 

1840 
Abbott, Edwin M. 
Brill, Anthony 
Brill, Christopher 



Gautier, James 
Gilbert, Adolphus 
Gilbert, Charles 
Hoyt, Alfred 
Mount, John 
Nichols, George 
Rockwell, D. F. 



64 



Roff, David 
Smith, Rufus 
Van Home, J. E. 
Waite, Joseph T. 
Waite, Robert N. 

1841 
Bruce, John 
Creech, David 
Dummer, Edward 
Frazer, James A. 
Hagal, F. 
Hutton, Robert 
Jones, John 
Johnson, George 
Kerr, John 
Lynch, Edward 
Lynch, Samuel 
Nichols, C. L. 
Narine, James 
Parkhurst, Henry 

Paulson, — 

Paulson, — - 

Steele, George 
Trull, John 

1842 

Bedford, Henry 
Bedford, Thomas 
Brooks, George 
Brooks, Samuel 
Chace, Cyrus A. 
Conway, Alfred 
Drayton, John B. 
Dummer, Charles 
Frazer, Alexander 
Garretson, Stephen 
Gregory, Walter 
Hagal, Daniel 
Hardenburgh, Jacob 

V, 

Harrison, James 
Hedding, Wash- 
ington 
Hedding, William 
Homans, James 
Jordan, Richard 
Kingsford, Samuel 
Kingsford, Thomp- 
son 



Lutkins, Clinton 
Lutkins, Stephen 
Lutkins, Theodore 
Mills, Christopher 
Murdock, John 
Narine, George 
Steele, Henry 
Tufts, William 
Williams, W. 
Young, Edward 
Young, Francis 

1843 

Adams, James M. 
Adams, Thomas 
Alexander, Joseph 
Birch, John 
Chapman, Robert 
Chazotte, S. Julian 
Cornelison, Wm. 
De Forest, Isaac 
De Forest, John 
Elliott, Wm. 
Eltringham, John 
Frazer, John D. 
Hancox, Edward 
Harrison, Andrew 
Harrison, William 
Irwin, James 
Kanouse, George 
Kerr, John 
Kerr, Thomas 
Kerr, William 
Marsh, Arthur 
Montgomery, George 
Morrison, Christian 
Mortimer, Charles E. 
Nevins, Rufus L. 
Ryder, James 
Ryder, Samuel 
Smith, Wm. 
Speyer, Edward 
Steele, George 
Trumbull, August 
Van Alen, Smith 
Wakeman, Fer- 
dinand 

1844 
Alexander, H. 



Baldwin, Edward 
Berti, Candide 
Betts, Bryan 
Bramhall, Moses 
Bramhall, Walter 
Bryan, Leon 
Danforth, Dela- 

plaine 
Doremus, Harrison 
Dows, Edward 
Drayton, Samuel 
Fraseyer, Cornelius 
Furey, John 
Furey, Richard 

Theodore 
Harrison, John 
Hesley, Christopher 
Hutton, Alexander 
Lang, Robert 
Leitch, Wm F. 
McMillan, L. 
Mead, Benj. F. 
Patterson, E. Her- 
bert 
Rockwell, Wm. 
Stimpson, Henry 
Strong, Benj. 
Van Home, Garret 
Van Schaack, Henry 
Gamble, Edward 
Gautier, Eugene 
Gerardin, Adolph 
Gingley, John 
Hardenburgh, 

Abraham 

1845-6 

Bailey, George A. 
Bensel, James 
Bell, Christopher 
Bonnell, Elias 
Brownell, Thomas 
Bullock, Hobart 
Danforth, George 
Fitzgerald, Ezekiel 
Fitzgerald, William 
Frazer, James 
Gamble, James 
Gardner, George 
Gardner, Robert 



65 




JAMES GAMBLE, U. S. N. 
(Drowned by sinking of a Monitor oft 
Charleston, S. C, during Civil War) 



Gough, John 
Gregory, Benny 
Gregory, Charles 
Gregory, Frank 
Gregory, Matthew 
Hancox, Clement 
Hathaway, Samuel 
Jahne, Mortimer 
Kimball, Stearns 
Miller, Geo. W. 
Miller, Marcus 
Mills, Augustus 
Mills, Benjamin 
Mills, Washington 
Morrel, Theodore 
Murdock, Ira 
Nichols, Edward 
Nichols, Henry 
O'Meara, James 

Frederick 
Ryder, George 
Shirley, Henry 
Smith, Freeman 
Smith, Merritt 
Stowell, Conger 



Taylor, Henry 
Torrey, Edward 
Torrey, Joseph 
Van Riper, Wm. 
Vroom, Alfred 
Vroom, John 
Ward, Charles D. 
Ward, John 
Ward, Lebbeus 
Ward, Samuel 
Witherill, Timothy 

1847 
Bonnell, John 
Booraem, John 
Cummings, Luther 
De Mott, A. Huyler 
Fairbanks, Peter 
Gordon, Henry 
Grunnell, Isaac 
Hill, G. 
Hill, Philip 
Holmes, Chas D. 
Holmes, James 
Homans, Henry 



Homans, William 
Oswald, Isaac 
McLaughlin, Edwd. 
Robb, J. 
Smith, George 
Smith, J. 
Steele, Dudley 

Gregory 
Stevens, John 
Stewart, Joseph C. 
Strober, Joseph 
Vroom, Bogart 
Vroom, George 
Williams, George 
Williams, H. 
Williamson, Abel 

1848 
Bennett, Geo. 
Bennett, S. 
Betts, Fred. B. 
Betts, John 
Brower, B. 
Brower, J. 
Burrage, Wm. 
Danforth, James 
Drayton, Henry S. 
Frazer, Wm. 
Garrison, John 
Hansen, Fritz 
Hansen, Moritz 
Howe, Sommers 
Kingsford, E. Wm. 
Kingsland, Edmund 
Losey, Eleazer 
McCoy, Joseph 
Palmer, David W. 
Palmer, James 
Rudderow, E. 
Ryerson, John 
Savery, Wm. 
Starr, Henry 
Traphagen, Wm. 
Vanderbeek, Frank 
Wheeler, James 

1849 
Ayer, Ellis 
Ayer, Simeon 
Broas, Richard 



66 



Chamberlin, Geo. 
Clark, Thomas F. 
Day, Nicholas 
Demarest, James 
Durant, Charles F. 
Fink, Charles 
Fox, Jefferson 
Fox, Shipman 
Franks, Flavel 
Frazeyer, Cornelius 
Gustin, Spencer 
Haight, George 
Hancox, Martin V. 

B. 
Harrison, John 
Holmes, Benjamin 
Hyde, Francis 
Hyde, Frederick 
Insley, Albert 
Insley, Henry A 
Knapp, Edgar 
Masset, John 
Matthewman, Joseph 
Maxwell, Thomas 
Meeker, Charles 
Morgan, Minot 
Oldner, Philip 
Patterson, John 
Paulmeier, Jacob 
Pearsall, Wm. 
Smith, Franklin 
Stewart, John H. 
Talcott, Kirk 
Tichenor, Cyrus D. 
Van Vorst, Wm. 
Vroom, George 
Wallis, A. Hamilton 
Wiley, Clinton 
Wiley, Franklin 
Wiley, James 
Wiley, John 
Witherill, Warren 
Zabriskie, Abram 
Zabriskie, Lansing 

1850 

Alger, Cassius 
Bell, Robert 
Chamberlin, Emer- 




COL. ABRAM ZABRISKIE, U. S. A. 
(Mortally wounded at Drewey's Bluff, May 16, 1864) 



Chambers, Miles 
Comstock, Charles 
Comstock, Joseph 
Cooledge, Edward 
Durant, George 
Fisher, Henry 
Flint, William 
Frazer, Clinton 
Frazer, D. Webster 
Gregory, A. M. 
Hardenburgh, T. 

Edward 
Hoey, Peter 
Howe, Edwin 
Kimball, Gardner 
Lamb, Charles 
McCormick, Wm. 
McKenzie, Charles 
McLaughlin, Jesse 
Meinicke, Edward 

C 
Miller, John F. 
Mills, John 
Pratt, Alfred 
Pratt, Luther A. 



Salisbury, George 
Talcott, William 
Vandeventer, George 
Vidal, W. 
Wakeman, Edmund 
Van Riper, John 
Westcott, W. 
Wilcox, Monson 
Wilder, Stuart 
Williamson, Aymar 
Zabriskie, Augustus 
Zabriskie, John 

1851 

Allen, Nicholas P. 
Benton, Joseph 
Best, Byron 
Betts, S. C. 
Brinkerhoff, Garret 

Van Home 
Broas, J. 
B rower, Edwin 
B rower, Frederick 
Chamberlin, C. 
Corey, Wm. D. 



67 




ALBERT INSLEY 
(From an Ambrotype Portrait by Henry E. Insley) 



Dame, Augustus 
Fink, Lewis 
Fitzgerald, Wm. 
Gasherie, Wm. 
Gilbert, Edward 
Gilchrist, James 
Gilchrist, Wm. 
Gordon, Leonard J. 
Green, Edward 
Gregory, James 
Haley, Jerry 



Hamilton, Wm. 
Hatch, Stephen S. 
Henry, Edward 
Henry, Frank 
Hoppin, Clinton 
Hough, Wm. 
Hunter, David 

Demarest 
Hunter, Henry 
La Forge, George 
Marsh, Seymour 



McLaughlin, Charles 
McLaughlin, Samuel 
Meinicke, Gustavus 
Morris, Francis 
Palmer, W. 
Pearsall, Wm. 
Rosbotham, Robert 
Salisbury, Frederick 
Scott, Courtland 
Scott, Walter 
Traphagen, Henry 



Van Winkle, Peter 
G. 

Vreeland, John 
Webb, James 
Webb, Samuel 
Wiley, J. Heaton 
Wiley, I. Howard 



1852 

Bell, Marshall 
Bramhall, Chas. C. 
Brevette, Jacob W. 
Cady, Jay 
Charon, Frederic 
Cain, R. E. 
Chamberlin, John F. 
Clement, Fred B. 
Decker, Abram 
Emmet, Robert 
Gourlay, Alexander 
Harrison, Wm. 
Jahne, Wilmer T. 
Janeway, Hugh 
Janeway, Thomas 
Kissam, Edgar 
LaBruyere, Enrique 
Malleson, Chas. H. 
McClure, A. Wilson 
Miner, Henry B. 
Moore, Elihu 
Morton, Charles 
Perry, George 
Reeve, David 
Robinson, Alfredo 
Robinson, Gabriel 
Satterlee, Charles 
Smith, Joseph 
Smith, Edward 
Stoughton, Frank 
Thatcher, Merritt 
Van Home, John 
Varick, Wm. 
Vreeland, Garre! G. 
Walton, Wm. 
Ward, Theodore 
Wenner, George 
Wheeler, Wm. 
Whitwell, Wm. 
Worth, Carlos 



1853 

Brooks, James 
Browning, Potter 
Clark, Thomas 
Dickerson, Henry C. 
Dodd, Courtland 
Frazer, Walter 
Harrison, John 
Hitchcock, Henry 
Holmes, Adrian 
Hopkins, Charles 
Kettle, Louis 
Kimball, Gardner 
Kimball, William 
Lathrop, Charles 
Main, John 
Mead, Walter 
Mills, Mortimer 
Morril, Charles 
Olcott, Edgar 
Park, Wm. 
Payne, Robert 
Payne, Wm. 
Spencer, James 
Terry, James 
Thomas, James 
Tripp, Cuthbert 
Van Cleef, F. T. 
Van Home, Richard 
Van Winkle, 

Adolphus 
Vreeland, Wm. 
Warner, John 
Wescott, Henry 
Wickham, James 
Wickham, John 
Wickham, Wilbur 
Zabnskie, C. 

1854 
Black, John 
Clark, Chas. A. 
Cranmer, Edwin 
Cronham, Geo. 
Davey, Wm. 
Davey, Edmund 
Fairchild, K. 
Fielder, George B. 
Fitch, Henry 
Fitch, Wm. 



Fitzgerald, L. 

Flanders, Wm. F. 

Gregory, M. 
Gregory, David 

Henderson 
Hardenburgh, Geo. 
Hellerman, H. A. 
Holmes, Ben. 
Jordan, Thomas 
Kashow, J. 
Kirby, Valentine 
Kutzemeyer, P. 
Landrine, Laurentius 
Marsh, J. 
Martin, George 
McBride, Thomas 
McClure, Edwin 
Mulford, Jerry 
Noyes, Francis 
Onderdonk, John 
Park, George 
Payne, Edwin 
Post, Abram 
Rapp, Elmer 
Richmond, Solomon 
Shields, Geo. 
Simmons, M. 
Skidmore, H. C. 
Taylor, Tommy 
Terry, G. 
Townsend, S. 
Traphagen, Cor- 
nelius 
Tuttle, Jos. E. 
Van Buskirk, An- 
drew 
Van Buskirk, James 
Van Buskirk, Myn- 

dert 
Wallingford, Henry 
Wiley, A. 
Anness, Wm. 

1855 

Baily, Thomas 
Barrett, S. 
Blake, Henry 
Bramhall, George 
Burhance, Richard 
Chichester, Piatt 



69 




Harry H. Gordon, Harry A. Pierson, Harry F. Cox 
Geo. B. Fielder, Leonard J. Gordon, Frank I. Vanderbeek 



Clapp, C. A. 
Clarke, William 
Clement, F. 
Clowes, J. 
Collins, James 
Gough, Isaac 
Gregory, James 
Gunn, A. 
Howe, George 
Howe, Robert 
Howe, Thomas 
Janeway, Frank L. 
Janeway, Wm. 
Keith, Charles J. 
McCoy, J. W. 
McKay, A. 
McGregor, Donald 
Miles, Thomas 
Morrison, J. 
Mosby, Frank D. 
Narine, Samuel R. 
Nielson, Walter 
Orr, John Henry 



Paulmeier, Stephen 
Richmond, C. H. 
Scott, Warburton 
Sisson, Elias 
Steele, Dudley 

Gregory 
Taylor, James 
Tripler, T. H. 
Van Winkle, E. 
Webster, Eddie 
Woodruff, Sayre 

1856 

Barnum 

Bard, Charles 
Baum, Douglass 
Bernard, J. 
Bumsted, J. 
Cheeks, W. 
Clerk, J. 
Cox, J. 
Davis, J. 
Dickinson, Wm. H. 

70 



Durant, J. 
Falkenbury, Amos 

P. 
Fink, Fred 
Fink, Willis 
Frasse, Wm. H. 
Hall, J. 

Henderson, Wm. J. 
Hoyt, Johnny 
James, Riker 
Jones, L. 

Keeney, Wm. Henry 
Kettle, C. 
Little, Edward 

Smith 
McLaughlin, George 
Mills, Albert 
Murray, Wm. 
Neilson, Eli 
Porter, E. 
Roberts, George 
Salisbury, H. 
Salisbury, Robert 
Serrel, Samuel 
Seymour, Roderick 
Skidmore, H. C. 
Smith, H., Jr 
Smyth, Abel 
Smyth, J. H. 
Spengeman, J. 
Stoveken, F. 
Taylor, David W. 
Vanderbeek, I. 
Vandewater, Henry 
Worstell, Frank 
Worstell, John P. 
Yard, Benj. 

1857-8 
Armstrong, Matt. 
Belle, J. 
Bragg, Henry 
Caldwell, A. 
Chapman, M. 
Cole, Wallace 
Corey, David 
Cornell, J. 
Falkenbury, Thos. 
Geoffroy, O. 
Hanford, A. 



Harriman, John 

Neilson 
Harriman, Orlando 
Hoffmann, Samuel 
Jaquins, Lorenzo 
La Forge, J. 



Mabie, E. 
Mason, Henry 
McCerren, F. 
McWilliams, E. 
Merseles, Jacob 
Post, Cornelius V. 



H. 



Roberts, F. 
Rowe, Norman L. 
Scott, D. 

Townshend, W. D. 
Vreeland, George 
Ward, H. C. 



At the time the foregoing list was prepared the survivors of the old 
Lyceum School are as follows, so far as known : 

Brinkerhoff , Garret V. H. 1 85 1 Durant, Charles F. . . 1 849 
Clarke, William . . . 1855 Gregory, David Henderson. 1854 
Dickinson, Wm. H. . . 1856 Insley, Albert . . . . 1849 
Drayton, Henry S. . . . 1848 Rowe, Norman L. . . .1857 
Post, Cornelius V. H. . 1857 



71 



